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In case you missed Steve Hargadon's interview with Diane Ravitch on October 26, 2010.

"This teacher hopes that Bill and Melinda read this comment:"

"In the Scholastic-Gates survey of teachers, teachers were asked what they wanted most. The greatest number said they wanted families to be more involved. (What mattered least: longer school days and hours, merit pay). "

"This year, my letter focuses on the catalytic role that measurement can play in reducing hunger, poverty, and disease. Setting goals and measuring progress are obviously not new ideas. But over the last year, I've really been struck by the impact this can have improving the lives of the poorest."

Yong Zhao: How PISA Misleads the World http://t.co/6DpRO4UxZ4

Yong Zhao: How PISA Misleads the World http://t.co/6DpRO4UxZ4

Misuse of standardised testing

Useful critique that argues that the national common core standards should be voluntary, not mandatory, since they have been developed within a corporate context that required such standards as a condition of eligibility for "race to the top" funds, and that it is unclear whether these standards will have positive or negative effects on students--they just haven't been tried enough to justify them as "national" or "mandatory."

"I refuse to hear any more about how important it is to differentiate our instruction as we prepare our kids for tests that are anything but differentiated. This negates our hard work and makes us look bad."

Paying banks to lower SPED costs?  Sure, I can see how that makes sense.  Paying the schools to serve the students sure has been a silly solution for all these years, and so simple Thank goodness that the DOE and the banks have made this clearer.

"An important new study  by Professors Adam Maltese of Indiana University and Craig Hochbein of the University of Louisville sheds new light on the validity of state scores. This study found that rising scores on the state tests did not correlate with improved performance on the ACT. In fact, students at "declining" schools did just as well and sometimes better than students where the scores were going up."

"The news reports say that the test scores of American students on the latest PISA test are "stagnant," "lagging," "flat," etc. The U.S. Department of Education would have us believe-yet again-that we are in an unprecedented crisis and that we must double down on the test-and-punish strategies of the past dozen years. The myth persists that once our nation led the world on international tests, but we have fallen from that exalted position in recent years." BUT....is what we're being told really the whole story? This blog post will help you see that our nation's creativity and innovation has NOTHING to do with our place nationally & internationally with test scores. So...how should that influence our approach to education?