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"The reality is that most parents do not want to close their schools or convert them into charters to be run by private corporations, where they may have even less voice and students fewer rights. They do not want the teachers' union to be destroyed, as it is the only organized, well-financed group acting to keep class sizes from mushrooming out of control and school budgets from further cuts."

"Rooted in the gospel tradition, the song "We Shall Overcome" became an anthem of the African‑American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and then an assertion of struggle and solidarity worldwide. Solidarity is at the heart of both the song and the phrase "we shall overcome." Given that history, it's both perverse and predictable that Philanthropy magazine titled its spring 2013 cover story "They Shall Overcome." The long article-written by then editor-in-chief Christopher Levenick-profiles five of the wealthiest backers of free-market K-12 public education reform (publicly funded but privately run charter schools, publicly funded vouchers for private schools, evaluating teachers and schools based on students' standardized test scores, closing large numbers of schools based on test scores or to save money, and the like)."

"To teachers, administrators and parents these may seem like the dark days on the eve of destruction of public education. Indeed, from draconian budget cuts to school closings, from competition for students from private fund-enhanced charter schools to maniacal focus on test scores, from flawed measures of teacher performance to attacks on teacher professionalism, public schooling as a collective good is under siege. These threats are especially ironic and unconscionable because we now know more about teaching, learning and effective change than ever before. So, it is the age of wisdom, light and hope because our knowledge grows and deepens. But it is also the age of foolishness, darkness and despair because ignorance and selfishness have prevailed over knowledge and evidence. In each critical area for improvement, foolishness threatens wisdom."

"Depending on whom you ask, the Common Core English Language Arts standards are either exactly what U.S. schools need, or exactly what they don't need. Here's an argument for the latter opinion, by Aaron Barlow, an associate professor of English at the New York City College of Technology. "

"There continues to be much bluster out there in ed reformy land that money really isn't all that important - especially for traditional public school districts. That local public schools and districts already have way too much money but use it so inefficiently that any additional dollar would necessarily be wasted. An extension of this line of reasoning is that therefore differences in spending across districts are also inconsequential. It really doesn't matter - the reformy line of thinking goes - if the suburbs around Philly, Chicago or New York dramatically outspend them, as long as some a-contextual, poorly documented and often flat out wrong, blustery statement can be made about a seemingly large aggregate or per pupil spending figure that the average person on the street should simply find offensive. Much of this bluster about the irrelevance of funding is strangely juxtaposed with arguments that inequity of teacher quality and the adequacy of the quality of the teacher workforce are the major threats to our education system. But of course, these threats have little or nothing to do with money? Right? As I've explained previously - equitable distribution of quality teaching requires equitable (not necessarily equal) distribution of resources. Districts serving more needy student populations require smaller classes and more intensive supports if their students are expected to close the gap with their more advantaged peers - or strive for common outcome goals. Even recruiting similarly qualified teachers in higher need settings requires higher, not the same or lower compensation. Districts serving high need populations require a) more staff - more specialized, more diverse and even more of the same (core classroom teacher) staff, of b) at least equal qualifications. That means they need more money (than their more advantaged neighbors) to get the job done. If they so happen to have substantially less money, it's not a matter of simply tradin

"In American public opinion it almost goes without saying that teachers should be paid more. The public is especially supportive of increasing compensation for accomplished teachers, teachers dedicated to working in hard to staff subjects, and teachers committed to closing the achievement gap."

"Scientifically disproven years ago, the "Beat the Odds" myth is still the excuse of convenience for justifying claims that schools can single-handedly overcome poverty."

"...I worry about the one-sided treatment of education issues, not only in Rhode Island, but in the national media. The corporate reformers seem shocked when anyone questions their narrative. They see no downside to their dogmatic belief in closing schools and firing principals and teachers, nor to their dogmatic faith that higher test scores are the goal of education. They accuse critics of "defending the status quo," even though it is they who are the status quo, the champions of get-tough accountability. They don't understand that they might be wrong, that their critics deserve a hearing, and that disagreement is healthy..."

"For all the efforts to improve education that are made in classrooms, school board meetings, research institutions, congressional chambers and elsewhere, one factor has in many ways eclipsed them all: an intense focus on standardized testing. High-stakes tests-flaws and all-seem to be driving everything from what subjects are taught, to how they are taught, to whether schools are closed, to how teachers are evaluated and compensated. Schools have even experimented with paying kids for higher test scores. Sadly, the pressure to measure has even diverted schools from implementing strategies known to improve student outcomes. "

"In a bare-bones basement office in Buffalo, N.Y., Katie Campos, an education activist, is plotting a revolution. She and her minuscule staff of the advocacy group Buffalo ReformED are against incredible odds. In less than a week, they are trying to get a controversial law known as the "parent trigger" through the New York legislature. It's a powerful nickname for game-changing legislation that would enable parents who could gather a majority at any persistently failing school to either fire the principal, fire 50% of the teachers, close the school or turn it into a charter school."

According to the new Recovery School District (RSD) superintendent, John White, "Five years ago, there were 62 percent of the youngsters attending failing schools. There are now only 18 percent of those youngsters who attend failing schools …so what exists, works."1 What a stupendous claim! If true, it would signify extraordinary student progress that the RSD has made since Katrina. Conversely, considering that the RSD and its proponents are so adept at manipulating data and misleading the public to support their cause, Research on Reforms (ROR) decided to investigate these claims more closely. The data for this commentary were all obtained from the 2009 and 2010 School Performance Scores (SPS) and student enrollment data from the website of the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE).2"

"The Star-Ledger reported that Chris Christie was a registered lobbyist at the law firm of Dughi, Hewit and Palatucci that lobbied the New Jersey government on behalf of Edison Schools from 1999 to 2001. Chris Cerf, who Christie appointed as New Jersey's Commissioner of Education, was the general counsel of that law firm. That Star-Ledger article also points out that William Palatucci, a partner of the firm who lobbied alongside Christie, was "a longtime political ally of the governor" and still remains a close friend. Chris Cerf was also the President and Chief Operating Officer for Edison Learning for eight years. "

Despite increasing evidence that collaboration is one of the keys to a school's success in improving student performance and closing achievement gaps, policymakers at national and state levels, including New York, are moving toward teacher evaluation systems that attempt to attribute student progress to the efforts of individual teachers.

Some may be put off by Superintendant John Kuhn of Texas calling out politicians directly, and flipping the notion of "failure" on its head. But he is right, and his conviction is inspiring.  (See the VIDEO of his speech BELOW.) His points reveal in a timely way an inconvenient truth in education and politics right now. NCLB, Race to the Top, and other policies that use high stakes tests to assign value to students, teachers and administrators do one thing really well: they create an even stronger disincentive for teaching in high needs schools than do the difficult working conditions that have always existed in underresourced schools--the imminent threat of being labelled unacceptable or ineffective by one narrow standradized test given on one day in a year, the results of which correspond more closely nation-wide to socio-economic status than any other factor. They create the same disincentive to learn for such students.

Rocketship schools have made it their mission to close the achievement gap that holds back students in under-served communities. They practice what they call the "Rocketship Hybrid School Model," which combines traditional classroom instruction with individualized instruction through online technology and tutors in a "Learning Lab."

Everyone agrees that the most important in-school factor in student achievement is the classroom teacher. At the same time, however, everyone has a different proposal for reaching that goal. Rather than recite the entire list, I'd like to examine one recommendation more closely.

This study found that schools fail to make AYP most often because of the students with disabilities subgroup. The failure of the special education subgroup to make AYP occurs mainly because the students with disabilities subgroup is expected to maintain the exact same proficiency levels as their general education peers-a standard that has proved to be problematic because special education students often start out with lower average test scores than general education students. In addition, the students with disabilities subgroup is the only subgroup in which actual limitations on ability to learn might come into play. The existence of these limitations calls into question the wisdom of trying to close the general education-special education "achievement gap" at the same pace as the race- or class-based achievement gaps. In addition to quantitative methods, this study also used legal research techniques to examine the legal impact that the two laws are having on students with disabilities.

In a country where white students vastly outperform black and Hispanic students on national standardized tests, one education innovator says the performance gap can be eliminated on a school-by-school basis by having honest discussions with teachers about race.

For all the talk about balancing the budget for the sake of our children, keeping classrooms closed is a perverse way of giving them a brighter future. What's needed is more time in classrooms, not less. Our school calendar, with its six-and-a-half-hour day and 180-day year, was designed for yesterday's farm economy, not today's high-tech one.  While many middle-class families now invest in tutoring and extra learning time, less-privileged children are left on the sidelines, which only widens gaps in achievement and opportunity.

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve "model" bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations-without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a "unique," "unparalleled" and "unmatched" organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org