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"On the very eve of the weekend celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Newark's state-appointed superintendent showed the citizens of Newark that they have no votes and they have no voice when it comes to the fate of their schools."

"Proponents of the Common Core have likened the struggle to implement it to the Civil Rights Movement. As we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the height of that movement, we must consider how these standards and the related testing are threatening students' rights to education, not upholding them. As one critical example, the Common Core's strict interpretation of "close reading of a text" dismisses the notion that students' own thoughts and experiences, and how they connect to a text, are integral to reading. Rather, student voices are silenced in their own classrooms, and literacy is reduced to the ability to navigate standardized tests."

"The next mayor of New York City faces some tough challenges particularly when it comes to setting public education priorities. Should he or she abandon Mayor Michael Bloomberg's fixation on testing and data-driven accountability, or expand school choice and close failing classrooms to give more options to families, especially English-language learners and those in low-income communities?"

"...The black-white gap was closing because, thanks in part to Johnson's War on Poverty, segregation was decreasing in the United States. The progress stopped because neo-liberal approaches to policy focused on school and market variables and not any longer on social and civil variables. Segregation increased. Today, many policy makers and educators do not see pooling or unpooling poverty as "reading variables" like phonemic awareness or comprehension strategies. But the truth of the matter -- and it is an expensive truth to ignore -- is that school is not separate from society, and that ceasing to pool poverty is the key variable to undoing the black-white gap, as well as the gap between rich and poor children more generally. "

Latino students in California - nearly 1.3 million of them English learners - are struggling to achieve academic success at the same level as their white peers. In "State has one of nation's highest gaps in Hispanic-white reading proficiency," Sarah Garland reports that only 12 percent of Hispanic fourth-graders in California tested proficient in reading in 2009. Nonprofits, government agencies and parents have all launched campaigns over the years to close the learning gap, but little progress has been made.

"The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a powerful non-profit organization whose membership is comprised of corporations and conservative politicians. This isn't merely a lobbying group, as corporate members craft legislation introduced at the state level that promotes free-market and conservative ideals - all behind closed doors."

"New York City has just released the new round of results from its school rating system (they're called "progress reports"). It relies considerably more on student growth (60 out of 100 points) than absolute performance (25 points), and there are efforts to partially adjust most of the measures via peer group comparisons.* All of this indicates that the city's system is more focused on school rather than student test-based performance, compared with many other systems around the U.S. The ratings are high-stakes. Schools receiving low grades - a D or F in any given year, or a C for three consecutive years - enter a review process by which they might be closed. The number of schools meeting these criteria jumped considerably this year. There is plenty of controversy to go around about the NYC ratings, much of it pertaining to two important features of the system. They're worth discussing briefly, as they are also applicable to systems in other states."

"While small schools and theme academies have faded as a focus of reform initiatives, charters have expanded rapidly. They raise similar issues and many more. In fact, given the growing promotion of charters by federal and state policymakers as a strategy to "reform" public education, the stakes are much higher. According to Education Week, there are now more than 6,000 publicly funded charter schools in the United States enrolling about 4 percent of all students. Since 2008, the number of charter schools has grown by almost 50 percent, while over that same period nearly 4,000 traditional public schools have closed.[i] This represents a huge transfer of resources and students from our public education system to the publicly funded, but privately managed charter sector. These trends raise concerns about the future of public education and its promise of quality education for all."

"To reiterate, the point here is not really about whether Camden schools should be taken over, nor is this discussion intended to suggest that the choice to do so was not deliberated extensively, using a variety of different types of information. Rather, this is about the more basic fact that NJ officials have justified their decision to the public based in large part on the argument that Camden schools are severely ineffective, but their evidence doesn't really come close to supporting that conclusion."

"Last September's Chicago teachers strike, organized-and won-by an unapologetically democratic, community-centered union, gave hope to laborites across the country that there could be a functional American labor movement. Now, a caucus of unionists seeks to remake New York's United Federation of Teachers, the city's local of the American Federation of Teachers, in the CTU's mold. The Movement of Rank-and-File Educators (MORE) was founded last spring as an alliance of teacher caucuses and activist groups. The caucus stands unconditionally opposed to school closings, retributive punishment of students, and the "junk science" of evaluating teachers based on student tests. "Teachers need to play the role in laying a platform for parents and students," says Marissa Torres, MORE's candidate for assistant treasurer in next month's elections. Torres calls for the UFT, like the Chicago Teachers Union, to foreground explicit anti-racism and collective struggle."

"What makes Union City remarkable is, paradoxically, the absence of pizazz. It hasn't followed the herd by closing "underperforming" schools or giving the boot to hordes of teachers. No Teach for America recruits toil in its classrooms, and there are no charter schools. "

A week ago I posted an interview with Teach For America's head of research, Heather Harding. Ms. Harding answered some tough questions that have been raised in recent months here on this blog. Today, I am sharing some responses to her answers. By way of context, I have come to believe that addressing teacher turnover is one of the linchpins of real reform in our struggling schools. Turnover is a key indicator of unhealthy working conditions for teachers -- and that tells us conditions for learning are poor as well. Programs such as Teach For America allow school districts to ignore these poor conditions, by providing a steady supply of novice teachers. Unfortunately, these novices turn over at a very high rate, and the schools must invest a lot of resources in their training -- which is lost when they leave. There are a number of facts in dispute regarding Teach For America, so we need to look closely at the evidence in order to make sensible conclusions. Here are some of the questions Ms. Harding answered where the facts are in question, followed by responses from myself, and several readers with some expertise in this domain.

What has happened in the past two years? Let's see: Race to the Top promoted the idea that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students; "Waiting for 'Superman'" portrayed teachers as the singular cause of low student test scores; many states, including Wisconsin, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio have passed anti-teacher legislation, reducing or eliminating teachers' rights to due process and their right to bargain collectively; the Obama administration insists that schools can be "turned around" by firing some or all of the staff. These events have combined to produce a rising tide of public hostility to educators, as well as the unfounded beliefs that schools alone can end poverty and can produce 100 percent proficiency and 100 percent graduation rates if only "failing schools" are closed, "bad" educators are dismissed, and "effective" teachers get bonuses. Is it any wonder that teachers and principals are demoralized?

The federal program providing billions of dollars to help states and districts close or remake some of their worst-performing schools remains a work in progress after two years, with more than 1,200 turnaround efforts under way but still no definitive verdict on its effectiveness. The School Improvement Grant program, supercharged by a windfall of $3 billion under the federal economic-stimulus package in 2009, has jump-started aggressive moves by states and districts. To get their share of the SIG money, they had to quickly identify some of their most academically troubled schools, craft new teacher-evaluation systems, and carve out more time for instruction, among other steps. Some schools and districts spent millions of dollars on outside experts and consultants. Others went through the politically ticklish process of replacing teachers and principals, while combating community skepticism and meeting the demands of district and state overseers.

On paper, the argument in favor of school choice is impeccable: Parents will be able to enroll their children in a school that best meets their needs and interests, bad schools will be forced to improve or close, and society will benefit from better educated graduates. But the reality is different.

Teachers often say they don't do their jobs for the money, but surely financial incentives are a factor in just about any career decision. Would you work harder at your job if there was a cash bonus on the line? More importantly, would the extra money alone somehow make you a more effective employee? Under a new law being implemented over the next several years in Indiana, student test scores will now be used as a factor in whether a teacher receives a pay increase. The Indianapolis Star, in partnership with The Hechinger Report, is closely monitoring the state's reform measures aimed at boosting teacher effectiveness. The state's teachers are questioning whether the law can be fairly applied, and whether merit raises will ultimately result in students learning more, according to the recent entry in the newspaper's series. There are also fears among educators that the unpredictability of the pay scale will discourage people from considering teaching as a career.

A popular history of vouchers suggests that they are a "new" reform tool and a product of free market ideas. They captured national attention relatively recently when they were implemented in the Milwaukee and Cleveland schools in the early 1990s.  In 2002, the Supreme Court resolved the constitutional questions concerning Cleveland's voucher program. This history typically cites Milton Friedman as the intellectual father of vouchers. Not so fast, says Professor Jim Carl. The origins and purposes of vouchers in American education are closely tied to our social history, he argues. In Freedom of Choice: Vouchers in American Education, Carl skillfully traces the origins of vouchers back to the segregated South in the 1950s. In this context, they were used to combat desegregation post- Brown.  However, through their history, civil rights advocates, free market economists, and policy makers all have embraced vouchers, seeking solutions to urban education. In other words, vouchers have been pliable and appealed to different groups, for different reasons. But, importantly, they began as a product of a social agenda in the South.

After three postponed attempts, New York State is on track to eliminate a set of less demanding exams that thousands of students with disabilities have used to earn diplomas. But where the state is closing a door, it is opening another one - or several. In a proposal that the Board of Regents will discuss at its meeting next week, the State Education Department has suggested creating a new safety net for students with disabilities, many of whom could fail to graduate from high school once they must take the more difficult exams.

If many so-called education reformers really want to close the student achievement gap, they should direct their fire away from public school educators and take aim at the real issue-poverty. This was the consensus of a panel of policy advocates and academics that convened recently on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. to discuss the impact of poverty on student learning over the past 40 years. The panelists presented data that showed the current state of student achievement and discussed what changes needed to be made to address the needs of students and schools in low socio-economic areas.

Over the last decade, research in public education has led us to three conclusions about the teaching profession: teachers are the most important in-school factor in determining student achievement; there is wide variation in teacher effectiveness; and those differences really matter for kids. These findings should have profound implications for policymakers and practitioners. Now that we have evidence attesting to the enormous contributions of the most effective educators, if we are truly serious about improving student learning and closing the achievement gap, we must think anew about teacher recruitment, placement, evaluation, professional development, retention, and separation.