Group items tagged

As the majority of legislative sessions around the country come to a close, many states will finish the season having pushed through policy changes that are likely to have a notable impact on teachers.

Georgia investigators have found evidence of cheating at close to 80 percent of the Atlanta schools where they examined the 2009 administration of state tests.

A simmering scandal in Atlanta over cheating on standardized tests came to a head this week as state investigators released a report that found in the city's schools "an enterprise where unethical-and potentially illegal-behavior pierced every level of the bureaucracy," according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The scandal follows closely on the heels of a USA Today investigation into possible cheating in the Washington, D.C. schools. The Hechinger Report talked with Robert Tobias, director of the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, and former head of assessment and accountability for the New York City schools, about whether high-stakes testing inevitably leads to cheating, and how it might be avoided.

"While politicians and the media misrepresent the achievement gap in order to demonize schools and teachers, we have ample evidence that addressing the whole life of the child is the only avenue to closing an achievement gap."

While the Obama administration's proposed reform efforts continue the obsession with test scores and the folly of trying to be globally competitive without being globally competent, students in other countries are hard at work to ensure that they become globally competent. America is "woefully behind almost all other countries of the world, particularly industrialized countries" in terms of foreign language studies, as Marty Abbott, the education director at ACTFL, told Education Week's Erik Robelen. I have been aware of and worried about this well-known fact, but what I saw and heard over the last few weeks gave me more reason to worry.

As the school year draws to a close, it's time to take stock of the current situation in American education.

New Orleans is one of the best examples of what national experts increasingly describe as a school "portfolio management model": a structure where schools that do not meet standards get closed or new management, much like an investor might drop or sell underperforming stocks.

There is widespread awareness that there is a very substantial gap between the educational achievement of the White and the Black population in our nation, and that the gap is as old as the nation itself. This report is about changes in the size of that gap, beginning with the first signs of a narrowing that occurred at the start of the last century, and continuing on to the end of the first decade of the present century. In tracking the gap in test scores, the report begins with the 1970s and 1980s, when the new National Assessment of Educational Progress began to give us our first national data on student achievement. That period is important because it witnessed a substantial narrowing of the gap in the subjects of reading and mathematics. This period of progress in closing the achievement gap received much attention from some of the nation's top researchers, driven by the idea that perhaps we could learn some lessons that could be repeated.

Our family gets a close-up look of how big money has taken over politics -- even at the local level

Last June, I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times disputing the idea of "miracle schools." With the assistance of two volunteer researchers, Gary Rubinstein and Noel Hammatt, I learned that several schools touted by various political leaders as miraculous were not. My intention was not to criticize the schools and their staff, but to criticize the politicians who were using the schools to imply that their policies (like firing the staff and closing the school) were working and that it wasn't all that difficult to turn around a school that enrolled large numbers of low-performing students.

When the Thomas B. Fordham Institute talks, people in the education policy community listen. The right-of-center think tank's staff includes some of the most well-known names in the education community, including Checker Finn, who has authored more than 40 books on education reform over the past two decades. A few weeks ago, Fordham released a report that claimed that the nation's efforts to close achievement gaps might be coming at the expense of our "talented tenth." Those are students who score in the top 10 percent on standardized tests. And again folks listened.

About two weeks ago, DOE officials released a list of twenty elementary and middle schools that they are considering closing.   According to the NY Times, "The schools on the list fit at least one of the following criteria: they got a D or F on their most recent progress report, or a C for a third consecutive year; they were on the state's list of persistently low-achieving schools last year; or they received a C or D from the teams of state and city officials who were sent to review them."

While on Wall Street many protesters decry economic inequality, and in Washington, D.C. debates continue over federal education policy, teachers across the country are occupying their classrooms. In the eyes of the president of the second-largest teachers' union, the two issues of inequality and education are closely related. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has been a frequent visitor to New York's OWS protests. The AFT recently revised its "working document" -- a sort of mission statement -- to include language referring to the richest 1 percent.

...as Democrats Abroad France wrote recently in a proposal submitted to the Democratic Party Platform Committee: "We cannot improve education by quick fixes, by handing over our public schools to entrepreneurs, by driving out experienced professionals replacing them with enthusiastic amateurs, or by closing them and firing ... entire staffs. No country in the world follows such strategies."

The Los Angeles-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which has sponsored a prize for the top urban public school districts for the past 10 years, is starting a similar award program for the nation's charter schools. The Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools will provide $250,000 to the charter management organization that demonstrates the best academic outcomes for traditionally disadvantaged students, including closing achievement gaps.

If you thought you knew everything about the remarkable transformation of Finland's schools from mediocre to one of the top performing school systems in the world, think again.  Native Finn Pasi Sahlberg (educator, researcher, advisor on global education reform,  and Director General of CIMO in Helsinki, Finland),  who has lived and closely studied this remarkable reformation, tells the full story in his newly released book, Finnish Lessons  - What can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?  Sahlberg shows how the Finnish ways of improving schools differ from the global educational reform movement and from the North American educational policies and reform strategies.  It's a wake-up call for all countries around the world who aspire to achieve excellence.

"Smarick sees two conversations going on today about charter schools. To one side are those like himself who are trying to figure out the new paradigm of schooling, in which privately-managed charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape. This conversation deals with finance, governance, how to get it right. It assumes that charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape and the question to be solved is one of tinkering. On the other side are people who worry about whether charter schools are a blight that damages public education and should be closely scrutinized for their finances, their boasts, and their policies governing admissions and suspensions. This side refers to hedge fund managers, privateers, and exorbitant executive salaries, and makes big headlines out of what Smarick considers the extraordinary miscreant."

"As part of Wal-Mart's back-to-school marketing efforts, the company recently launched a series of teacher appreciation videos, ads, hashtags and discounts. Teachers--who routinely dig deep into their own pockets to pay for supplies and materials for their students--are grateful for appreciation in all its forms. They are understandably less pleased when half-hearted discounts come from a company with a terrible track record for respecting its own employees and are accompanied by a large-scale effort to dismantle our nation's public education system and silence their voice. In fact, teachers are so offended by the so-called education reform agenda promoted by Wal-Mart's owners, the Waltons, that one teacher recently launched a petition calling on his peers not to shop at Wal-Mart this back-to-school season. More than 5,000 teachers have already added their names to his pledge. A closer look at the Walton family's massive investment in "education" paints a clear picture of why teachers are so upset. Since 2000, the Walton Family Foundation has given more than $1 billion to destabilize public education--draining funds from students and closing neighborhood schools, and instead supporting corporate-style education policies in an attempt to bring Wal-Mart's business model to classrooms across the country."

"So, where should that finger of blame point here?  Or is this just how things work these days - slash the funding of the highest need districts - call them failing - close their schools - give their property and their teacher's jobs to someone else - and claim victory - leaving others, years down the line to clean up your mess? Angry Andy - this is your mess. Now do the right thing and fix it!"

"I'm sure you've heard for years-even decades-that the public schools are failing; that teachers are lazy, incompetent and their labor unions are responsible for this so-called failure. The solution: fire the teachers, close the public schools and get rid of the labor unions. Then turn education over to private sector corporations run by CEOs who only answer to their wealthiest stock holders. For instance, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock and a flock of Hedge Fund billionaires. Let's see what you think after we go back to 1779 and walk through 235 years of history to the present. It won't take long-a few facts and a conclusion."