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Last week, more than 400 principals on Long Island, N.Y., signed a letter of public protest against the state's new and untried teacher evaluation system. The signatories, drawn from elementary, middle, and high schools, represent two-thirds of all principals on Long Island, which includes Nassau and Suffolk counties. Their letter is historic. It's the first time that a large number of administrators have spoken out in opposition to bad ideas. It represents hundreds of educators who are willing to stick their necks out, hundreds of educators willing to speak truth to power, hundreds of educators who put their name on a statement to the state's highest education officials, with this simple message: "Stop! What you are doing is wrong. What you are imposing on us is untested. We believe it will be harmful to our students. It will undermine education quality. It will hurt teachers and ruin morale. You are treating us like lab rats. Stop. Respect the lives that are in your keeping."

Efforts to improve our schools have always been spurred on by comparisons between our nation and others, which usually find us somewhere in the middle of the pack. In the 1950s the Russians were winning the space race because Ivan studied 12 hours a day, while his American counterpart goofed off at the soda parlor. In 1983, once again, the nation was "at risk" because we had allowed our standards to fall so low.

"In a conversation about the intractable problems of the Middle East, one of David Grossman's characters in his compelling novel, "To the End of the Land," says, "Who could possibly come up with a new, decisive argument that hasn't been heard?" An equal sense of frustration must lurk in the efforts to construct a reasonable, fair way to assess the performances of public school teachers."

Vasilios Biniarls is a math teacher at a Queens middle school program for gifted students, The Academy at PS 122. He wrote to Insideschools after his name was published in the press as a "Below Average" teacher. Here's his view. Insideschools will not be publishing or linking to the Teacher Data Reports.

"The latest issue of the AFT American Educator publication contains an article that presents "Myths of the Common Core" and responds to each one with "facts." Tim Farley, principal of the Ichabod Crane Elementary/Middle School in Valatie, New York, did not agree with the publication's definition of the facts. Here is his rebuttal"

"For a dozen years, big philanthropy has been funding a massive crusade to remake public education for low-income and minority children in the image of the private sector. If schools were run like businesses competing in the market-so the argument goes-the achievement gap that separates poor and minority students from middle-class and affluent students would disappear. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation have taken the lead, but other mega-foundations have joined in to underwrite the self-proclaimed "education reform movement." Some of them are the Laura and John Arnold, Anschutz, Annie E. Casey, Michael and Susan Dell, William and Flora Hewlett, and Joyce foundations."

L.A. Times reports that abound half of all  teachers in charter middle and high schools left their jobs each year over a six-year period studied by UC Berkeley researchers, who released their findings last week. Why such an incredibly rate of attrition?

Governors and teachers' unions are going head-to-head in several states across the country, and the public feels caught in the middle, a new survey on the public's perception of U.S. schools finds. When those polled were asked how teachers' unions have affected the quality of U.S. public education, 47 percent said unions hurt it. But even so, 52 percent said they side with unions in disputes with governors over collective bargaining.

Our educational system, historically a major engine for equal opportunity and a pathway to the American Dream, is under severe stress. Along with it, the working- and middle-class and immigrant dream of rising out of economic anxiety is evaporating, as our public education system, from preschools through public universities, has lost broad support. This is evidenced by declining state commitments to public education-relative to health-care and prison expenditure-by property-tax caps in communities and states that affect the quality of schools, and by expenditure cuts rather than tax increases at the federal level of the kind we just witnessed in the debt-ceiling agreements. We make decisions and deals like these at our peril.

Project VoiceScape, led by the documentary program POV, paired middle- and high-school artists nationwide with experienced filmmakers to tell the stories these teens see influencing the lives around them. The following short films were among the top teen documentaries and grant winners in a 2011 competition. Project VoiceScape is a project of Adobe Youth Voices, Adobe Foundation's global signature philanthropy program; POV, public television's award-winning showcase for independent nonfiction films; and PBS.

A new national study of academic progress in charter networks-which my colleague Nirvi Shah wrote about yesterday and this morning-is already generating debate among the commenters here. Yet it also highlights some interesting ways research on controversial issues gets channeled in our 24/7 blogo-news world.

"...Today, the bands of nouveau corporate royalists (with coats of arms bearing such names as Coors, DeVos, Koch, Scaife, and Walton) are determined to take back those middle-class gains of yesteryear."

Sometimes it seemed like a slick oilman or salesman was hovering around the room. Yes, he is personable, but personality does not resolve issues affecting the masses and the middle class if a genuine intent to do the right thing is absent.

I gotta admit that my favorite part of the Third Way memo responding to my critique of their "Middle Class" report is the end of the memo.