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"The shame that many teachers and principals feel at being made responsible for a school's low academic performance is a recent phenomenon. Historically, policy elites and educators explained poor academic performance of groups and individual students by pointing to ethnic and racial discrimination, poverty, immigrants' cultures, family deficits, and students' lack of effort. School leaders would say that they could hardly be blamed for reversing conditions over which they had little control. Until the past quarter-century, demography as destiny was the dominant explanation for unequal school outcomes. Things began to change by the mid-1970s."

"The trend to use value-added models to rate teachers and principals in New York is psychometrically indefensible."

"School closings, the threat of which hang over Chicago public schools, and which have been a central feature of Bloomberg educational policies in New York, are perhaps the most controversial features of the Obama administration's "Race to the Top" initiative. The idea of closing low-performing schools, designated as such entirely on the basis of student test scores, removing half of their teaching staff and all of their administrators, and replacing them with a new (typically charter) school in the same building, is one which has tremendous appeal among business leaders and almost none among educators. Advocates see this policy as a way of removing ineffective teachers, adding competition to what had been a stagnant sphere of public service, and putting pressure on teachers in high-poverty areas to demand and get high performance from their students, once again based on performance on standardized tests. For a "data driven" initiative, school closings have produced surprisingly little data to support their implementation."

"Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham from the University of Virginia gets to the heart of the matter:"

"The rescue of public education must come from the grassroots, from a coalition led by parents and teachers. Such a movement has been taking shape gradually and gained visibility during the 2012 election cycle. The number of education-related campaigns has increased as ed reformers try to entrench their policies in law. In addition to the familiar battles over school funding, there are votes on charter schools, the content of teacher contracts, vouchers, and union rights (the four largest unions in the United States represent teachers and other public sector workers). Disregarded in the past, elections for school boards and superintendents have become major battles. This year's education votes were high-profile within individual states, fiercely fought, and outlandishly expensive; some attracted national attention. Public education supporters won some impressive victories and suffered several bitter disappointments. Here is a review of some pivotal votes, who supported what, and why"

"Let's be clear. The education of public school students is critical to a democracy and important to resume, even in the wake of a natural disaster. Yet, no public official quoted in the news reports expressed concern about students' education and how it would be situated in any ethic of caring, given what students and teachers endured. No one spoke of the problematic learning environments or the effects of the trauma students would experience when they returned to some of the schools. Instead, their quotes expressed concern about students and teachers doing time, reflecting neoliberalism's ongoing hollow conceptualizations of education. Whether this is a function of the media's errors in reporting or the public officials' limited understanding of education is irrelevant. Their comments, or lack thereof, reflect a broader crisis of public misunderstandings of education in a democratic society."

"Ultimately, as more states pass charter school amendments like Georgia, and money is sucked out of public schools, then public schools will meet the same fate as the rest of the ghettoized public institutions in America. Public education will be just like public housing, which most Americans think of as low-income, crime-ridden neighborhoods. Or it will be like public hospitals, which most Americans see as disease-ridden institutions filled with impoverished, sick people. Because, in both cases, these institutions principally serve the very poor, there's little sympathy for Americans stuck in public housing or public hospitals.  Little sympathy also translates into little funding, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty and the disintegration of our public institutions.  "

"Much is being sacrificed to meet both this expensive mandate and the newly enacted tax cap, all while serious challenges to the program's validity and the research upon which it is based remain."

"Modern education reform is being driven by people who believe that competition, privatization and other elements of a market economy will improve public schools. In this post, Mark Tucker, president of the non-profit National Center on Education and the Economy and an internationally known expert on reform, explains why this approach is actually harming rather than helping schools."

"The democratic mission of public education is under assault by a conservative right-wing reform culture in which students are viewed as human capital in schools that are to be administered by market-driven forces."

"In response to my post, "What Happens when Profits Drive Reform?" Tom Segal has written a full-throated defense of the profit-seeking enterprises in the education sector. I think he overstates their value, and brushes aside legitimate concerns about the dangers our public schools face."

"The Washington, D.C. school system's failure to hold higher-ups accountable for their 2008-2010 test cheating scandal has led to more speculation that some are intentionally stonewalling attempts to get at the truth."

"...there are a few points about the stability of value-added (or lack thereof) that are frequently ignored or downplayed in our public discourse. All of them are pretty basic and have been noted many times elsewhere, but it might be useful to discuss them very briefly. Three in particular stand out."

"In all the conflicting accounts between the city and the UFT about the collapse of the teacher evaluation negotiations, there is one clear point of agreement: the Mayor refused to accept a two year sunset for the plan. In this, he was deeply wrong for disallowing the city to pilot what is essentially an experiment that could go badly, for both teachers and children. Meanwhile, 90 percent of the districts in the rest of the state, appropriately, have a one year sunset on their teacher evaluation systems. "

The second largest school district in the nation, Los Angeles Unified, is in the midst of what must surely be the costliest school board race ever. This month we have seen report after report of billionaire donations rolling in, totaling almost $3 million. First we learned that Eli Broad and former Univision head Jerrold Perenchio had each pitched in $250,000. Then New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg dropped a cool million into the effort. Most recently, Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst lobby has added in their own quarter million. The billionaire's money is being spent to pay for what the usually staid Los Angeles Times calls "junk ads," and "serious exaggeration and distortion." The big concern among these "reformers," is apparently that the pace of charter school expansion might be slowed. They are also very focused on eliminating or weakening due process and seniority protections for teachers. And most of all, they want board members who will offer strong support to Superintendent John Deasy, a favorite of the Gates Foundation.

"With the usual fanfare, we were all blessed last week with yet another study seeking to inform us all that charteryness in-and-of-itself is preferential over traditional public schooling - especially in NYC! In yet another template-based pissing match (charter vs. district) design study, the Stanford Center for Research on Educational Outcomes provided us with aggregate comparisons of the estimated academic growth of a two groups of students - one that attended NYC charter schools and one that attended NYC district schools. The students were "matched" on the basis of a relatively crude set of available data."

A cornerstone of the Cuomo administration's self-declared tower of accomplishments was marked for demolition last week. It can't be blown up high enough or fast enough. The governor's beloved 2 percent tax cap was challenged in a lawsuit filed by the New York State United Teachers union in state Supreme Court in Albany. The suit offers multiple arguments why the tax cap is unconstitutional, asserting that it locks in unequal funding between have- and have-not school districts across the state, ''while pushing many school districts to the brink of educational and financial insolvency,'' in the words of NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi.

"Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center, New York, explains her concerns about the Common Core. She previously wrote a book about how to implement the standards and now wishes she could retract it."

"I have thought long and hard about the Common Core standards. I have decided that I cannot support them. In this post, I will explain why."

"This brief reviews the history and current status of Parent Trigger legislation, presents a critique of the legislation, and suggests alternative ways to meet the stated goals of a Parent Trigger."