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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Oklahoma Election Results - NonDoc

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Oklahoma State Election Board - 2020-Election Results - https://www.ok.gov/elections/Election_Info/Election_Results/2020-Election_Results.html

Oklahoma Senate elections: Dems gain one, lose one

by Kayla Dunn / 51min

You win one, you lose one. Jo Anna Dossett was the only Democratic candidate to prevail in an Oklahoma State Senate race Tuesday, narrowly defeating Republican Cheryl Baber with 50.9 percent of the vote for Senate 

Republicans add 5 to Oklahoma House roster

Wendy Weitzel - Wednesday, November 4, 2020

The last rural Democrat in the Oklahoma House of Representatives lost his reelection race on Tuesday night. Rep. Matt Meredith (D–Tahlequah), who has served House... CONTINUE READING: Republicans add 5 to Oklahoma House roster

Stephanie Bice defeats Kendra Horn in CD 5 battle

200+by Matt Patterson / 10h

State Sen. Stephanie Bice (R-OKC) battled through a runoff and a brutal general election campaign to narrowly defeat incumbent Democrat U.S. Rep. Kendra Horn on Tuesday. In the end, the spread was thin, with Bice leading by about 11,000 votes with more than 98 percent of precincts reporting. Bice won on the strength of a […] The post appeared first on NonDoc .

Tommie Johnson elected Oklahoma County sheriff

by Tres Savage / 10h

Despite being criticized by his opponent for having worked fewer years in the law enforcement profession, Republican Tommie Johnson defeated Democrat Wayland Cubit on Tuesday in an open race for Oklahoma County sheriff. Johnson will become the county’s first Black sheriff. “I am honored and humbled to be elected Oklahoma County sheriff,” Johnson said in […] The post appeared first on NonDoc .

Brian Maughan re-elected Oklahoma County commissioner

39by Tres Savage / 11h

Incumbent Republican Brian Maughan has been re-elected to the Oklahoma County Board of Commissioners representing District 2, which covers roughly the southern third of the county. Hicks led absentee and early voting, but Maughan drew a commanding advantage in Election Day returns. With more than 96 percent of precincts reporting, Maughan held more than 57 […] The post appeared first on NonDoc .

State Question 814: Voters reject TSET change to fund Medicaid expansion

by Andrea DenHoed / 11h

Oklahomans have voted to reject State Question 814, which would have amended the Oklahoma Constitution to redirect annually received funds that currently go to the state’s Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust. The change would have directed much of the money to be used for Medicaid expansion instead. With more than 90 percent of precincts reporting at […] The post appeared first on NonDoc .

SQ 805: Criminal justice reform proposal rejected

56by Megan Prather / 11h

With more than 90 percent of state precincts reporting, State Question 805 has been rejected by Oklahoma voters today with 60.9 percent of voters opposing the criminal justice ballot initiative at the time of this post’s publication. SQ 805 would have amended the Oklahoma Constitution to end sentence enhancements for people formerly convicted of non-violent […] The post appeared first on NonDoc

Oklahomas re-elect Jim Inhofe to U.S. Senate

100+by Andrea DenHoed / 12h

Voters have chosen to re-elect Jim Inhofe to the United States Senate for his fifth term. At the time of this post’s publication, Inhofe held approximately 65 percent of the vote with more than 86 percent of precincts reporting. His strongest opponent, Democrat Abby Broyles, had received approximately 3

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A Bad Night | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Bad Night | Diane Ravitch's blog

A Bad Night

Once again, the polls misled us. We were expecting an overwhelming defeat for the incompetent racist-misogynist-xenophobic liar Trump, but it didn’t happen. As of 2:35 am, when I wrote this, the election was undecided. Trump held on to most of the states he won in 2016. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are not decided, although the polls showed comfortable leads for Biden in all three. The blowout that the polls told us to expect did not happen.

Republicans Joni Ernst, Mitch McConnell, and Lindsay Graham were re-elected, perhaps even the pusillanimous Susan Collins. It’s not yet clear which party will control the Senate.

As awful as Trump is, as badly as he has damaged the Western alliance, as surely as he has mishandled the pandemic, there’s a chance that we will have four more years of this mendacious buffoon. What does that say about the American people? What does it say about the Republican Party?

Four more years of DeVos or someone just like her? Heaven help us. Trump would wind the clock back to 1925, before the New Deal. No restraints.

If Biden ekes out a victory and has a Republican Senate, he won’t be able to fulfill any of his promises. A sad day.

A Bad Night | Diane Ravitch's blog

Teacher Tom: We've Robbed Them of Childhood

Teacher Tom: We've Robbed Them of Childhood

We've Robbed Them of Childhood

As a boy, I went to school like almost everyone, then came home and played in the neighborhood, in our yards, our neighbor's yards, in the street, in vacant lots, in construction sites, and, more rarely, in one another's garages or bedrooms. We could do that because school let out in the mid-afternoon, we had stay-at-home parents, no homework to speak of, and we lived in a world in which we didn't fear molesters and kidnappers behind every tree. We did not have organized after school programs or activities, so our mothers didn't have to chauffeur us from place. We had very few toys and most television programming was dull.

What we had was other kids. Even as young as four-years-old, mom would tell me I was driving her crazy, send me outside, and shut the door behind me. If there weren't already other kids out there, I quickly learned to go find them, going from door-to-door knocking, and asking, "Can Johnny play?" "Can Lisa play?" "Can Ralph play?" Then we would play with minimal adult supervision until our parents called us in, which was usually dinner time.

Both school and childhood have changed dramatically over the past 40-50 years. School days are longer, more strictly scheduled, and increasingly academic. School is "important" in a way it wasn't, with parents, teachers, and policy-makers obsessing over such things and test scores, grades, grit, and those mythological "jobs of tomorrow" for which our children must be prepared for the sake of our nation's economic competitiveness. Lucky children might have an hour of "free play" before bedtime or on weekends, but even that tends to be indoors, heavily supervised and often not "free" at all, with adults defining the limits of their play with rules, cautions, and Johnny-on-the-spot interventions should there be any hint of conflict, struggle, or failure.

This is not healthy. Children are human beings and as such, CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: We've Robbed Them of Childhood

CURMUDGUCATION: Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission

CURMUDGUCATION: Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission

Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission

Like many of you, I'm hoping that Trump's Executive Order establishing a 1776 Commission will be rendered moot sometime within the next 12-2,215 hours. But because, like many of you, I need something to distract me from doomscrolling (and the board of directors is napping), I'm going to go ahead and look at this damn fool executive order. The short form is that this is all empty political hooey, but I'm trying to kill time here.

First, it has to be said that somebody at the White House has a real gift for hamfisted baloney writing. Right of the bat we get the purpose of this EO-- "to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union." Because he's sure he heard that "more perfect union" thingy in some patriotic program once. 

Let's go.

Section 1. Purpose.

The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions.

I'm not sure a "founding" can "envision" anything. Nor am I sure about "natural law" and its traditions. So much about this EO sets off a long-time English teachers detector for "this student does not understand the words and phrases that he has copied from some other source." 

It goes on to note that the formation of a republic (notice-- not a democracy, but a republic, as all CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Trump's Executive Order for 1776 Commission