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"During the 2010, 2011, and 2012 legislative sessions, a combination of federal policy incentives and newly elected governors and legislative majorities in many states following the 2010 elections sparked a wave of legislation addressing teacher effectiveness. More than 20 states passed legislation designed to address educator effectiveness by mandating annual evaluations based in part on student learning and linking evaluation results to key personnel decisions, including tenure, reductions in force, dismissal of underperforming teachers, and retention. In many cases states passed multiple laws, with later laws building on previous legislation, and also promulgated regulations to implement legislation. A few states acted through regulation only. In an effort to help policymakers, educators, and the public better understand how this flurry of legislative activity shifted the landscape on teacher effectiveness issues-both nationally and at the state level-Bellwether Education Partners analyzed recent teacher effectiveness legislation, regulation, and supporting policy documents from 21 states that took major legislative or regulatory action on teacher effectiveness in the past three years. This analysis builds on a previous analysis of teacher effectiveness legislation in five states that Bellwether published in 2011. Our expanded analysis includes nearly all states that took major legislative action on teacher effectiveness over the past three years."

"The 2013 Attack on Teachers included the vicious slow impoverishment of elderly retired teachers. By attacking the earned delayed compensation (pensions) of active and retired teachers, the corporate led war against public education hits a terrorist level of ruthlessness. Who wishes to teach if they are assured of having their paychecks cut and plundered by corporate controlled legislators when they become old? Yes, this is The Shock Doctrine applied to teachers in state after state. Teachers, students, parents, taxpayers and the future of America are victims on the sacrificial altar of Insane Profit."

"There's one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a fairly neoliberal education agenda"

"Katie Zahedi is principal of Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York, which is located in upstate Dutchess County. She is active in the association of New York Principals who bravely oppose the State Education Department's educator evaluation plan based mostly on test scores. Zahedi has been a principal and assistant principal at her school for twelve years. The views she expresses here are solely her own and not those of the district or her school. Suffice it to say that she is a woman of unusual integrity and courage, who is determined to speak truth to power. She wrote this piece for the blog in response to the release of the Common Core test results in New York, in which scores collapsed across the state."

"According to The New York Times, the New York State Attorney General has exposed the supposedly non-profit Pearson Foundation for what it really is, a partner with the for-profit wing of the global Pearson publishing mega-giant. The Pearson Foundation agreed to pay a penalty of over seven million dollars to New York State that will be used to prepare teachers to work in high needs communities. According to New York State law, foundations are prohibited by law from using charitable funds to promote and develop for-profit activities."

"The champions of corporate education reform insist that efforts to strip teachers of the procedural guarantees of due process embedded in tenure are somehow an extension of the Civil Rights Movement. In the latest iteration of this make-believe history, former CNN anchor Campbell Brown and her ally, lawyer David Boies, wax philosophical about how their campaign to end tenure is really "about Civil Rights." While the rhetoric plays well in the press, it deliberately misrepresents the actual history of Civil Rights. In reality, teachers played a critical role in the movement. In some cases, they were able to do so because they were bolstered by tenure, preventing their arbitrary dismissal for activism."

Rita Solnet is a Palm Beach County mom and business woman who liked being involved in her son's school. When she saw many things going what she considered the wrong way in public education, she stepped up her activism. She helped get new Palm Beach School Board members elected and she tried to help push the local debate in a new direction. That got her tied to education historian Diane Ravitch, who lately has come out against the accountability systems that Florida and other states have adopted. From there, Solnet helped create the national Parents Across America and most recently helped organize the Save Our Schools rally in Washington D.C. Solnet spoke with reporter Jeff Solochek about her efforts, her goals and Matt Damon.

When it comes to applying to private schools, New Yorkers often have to learn to live with rejection. Some who were accepted early at Avenues, the new for-profit school set to open in Chelsea in 2012, face a different problem: They are being actively pursued.

Along comes neo-liberal education reform, built around the idea that the invisible hand of markets and competition can solve educational problems.  A whole raft of activity follows.  Reformers talk about billions spent each year compensating teachers for master's degrees that are disconnected from student outcomes.  Municipalities and school boards balk at funding automatic step raises on the grounds that longevity does not equal quality.  The linchpins of tenure and seniority come under assault on the somewhat contradictory grounds that tenure protects bad teachers and seniority encourages the mal-distribution of good teachers.

In the wake of the stock market crash, Congress wisely passed the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933. The landmark legislation successfully separated investment and commercial banking activities until it was repealed in 1999. Many economists today believe the decision to do so played a major role in the country's financial meltdown. I see a dangerous parallel taking place in education. As columnist Michael Winerip explained in "When Free Trips Overlap With Commercial Purposes" (On Education, The New York Times, Sept. 19), test companies are increasingly involved in the decisions made by state education officials. Winerip detailed how the Pearson Foundation through its commercial side paid to send top state education officials abroad to meet with their international counterparts.

The Post-High School Outcomes of Young Adults With Disabilities up to 6 Years After High School: Key Findings From the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 is a report that uses data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 dataset to provide a national picture of post-high school outcomes for students with disabilities. The report includes postsecondary enrollment rates; employment rates; engagement in employment, education, and/or job training activities; household circumstances (e.g., residential independence, parenting status); and social and community involvement.

One of the most important guiding principles in education is in loco parentis - we are morally and legally obliged to act "in place of the parent" when children are in our care.  That principle is the main reason for the sharply negative and visceral reaction I had when I read about John F. Kennedy High School using color-coded identification cards based on student test scores, and then a later article describing a similar program at Cypress High School (both in Orange County, California).  According to the Orange County Register, the different cards also led to different privileges around school, discounts on various purchases, and even led an administrator to insult a group of students in an assembly.  The policy has sparked  debate and quite a bit of criticism online (and in rather short order, the district announced that most of the discriminatory practices would be ended).  Anthony Cody wrote about it in his blog and I left some comments there and on Twitter, and the topic has been actively discussed on Huffington Post as well.

"Pundits love to make cross-state comparisons and rank states on a variety of indicators (I'm guilty too). A favorite activity is comparing NAEP test scores across subjects, including comparing which states have the biggest test score gaps between children who qualify for subsidized lunch and children who don't. The simple conclusion - States with big gaps are bad - inequitable - and states with smaller gaps must being doing something right! It is generally assumed by those who report these gaps and rank states on achievement gaps that these gaps are appropriately measured - comparably measured - across states. That a low-income child in one state is similar to a low-income child in another. That the average low-income child or the average of low-income children in one state is comparable to the average of low-income children in another, and that the average of non-low income children in one state is comparable to the average of non-low income children in another. LITTLE COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH."

I did a bit of digging to find out more about the role Teach Plus played supporting Senate Bill 1, passed this spring in Indiana. I found out that Stand For Children was responsible for active support of the law, including sponsoring polls that showed public support for the idea of basing teacher pay and layoffs primarily on "student academic growth."

This focus on improving teaching is evident in recent grants. A new report on foundation activity, Critical Contributions: Philanthropic Investment in Teachers and Teaching (www.criticalcontributions.org), released today by the University of Georgia and Kronley & Associates, found that foundations directed $684 million to teachers and teaching between 2000 and 2008.

A school that middle class parents once kept their distance from was now attracting them with French and Spanish dual-language classes, after-school programs and an increasingly active Parent Teacher Association. "There was a renaissance," Mr. de Voldere said. And then came the city Education Department's report card on the school's progress from 2010 to 2011: A grade of "F."

There was a time, not very long ago, when I was an active volunteer alumni recruiter for TFA. And, as you might expect, I was great at it. One year, I think it was 1998, I did a recruitment session at Colorado College, a very small school, which brought the house down. A year later when TFA published the list of the most popular schools for TFA, Colorado College was listed alongside The University Of Michigan and all the other common TFA schools as one of the top twenty schools for that year.

"What's got teachers stirred up? How real and potent is this upsurge of their activism? Why should people who identify with progressive causes care? Salon recently posed those questions, and others, to Lily Eskelsen García, the new president-elect of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, at the recent Netroots Nation conference in Detroit."

"Friday, a column in the New York Times cited research in genetic markers associated with resilience to advance what I believe would lead to the practice of Eugenics in our schools. Eugenics was quite popular in the 1920s. The basic idea was that society would benefit by encouraging reproduction of those most genetically "fit, and actively discouraging those determined to be unfit. The project was discredited when it became the foundation of Hitler's racist program to establish the "master race.""

I'm currently deep into Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation, a highly recommended read for those committed to learning about struggles for social justice in public education. An excerpt captured from the book's introduction serves as a catalyst for thought and questioning. In the foreword teacher activist Adam Sanchez interviews Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools.