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The articles in this issue are designed to do exactly that: to defend the hope that public education (an education truly controlled by the public) provides, while promoting the goal of all true education-the emancipation of human creativity, i.e., of human beings themselves.

The following open letter from UFT President Michael Mulgrew to New York City parents ran as a full-page ad in the New York Daily News on Jan. 9.

Class Size Matters has done a detailed analysis of the trend in student achievement in NYC since 2003, when Mayor Bloomberg's educational policies were first implemented, as measured by the NAEPs - the national assessment carried out every two years by the federal government in 4th and 8th grade English and math.  

What educators have known for years is now obvious for all to see-this mayor has no regard for students, teachers or public education as an institution.  He has had a large-scale plan, which started at the beginning of his tenure and has now reached its apex. Here's how he did it

New York City voters trust the teachers union more than Mayor Michael Bloomberg to protect the interests of public-school students, according to a new poll that gives the union a jolt of credibility as it negotiates over a new teacher-evaluation system. The poll, released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, found that 56% of city voters said they trust United Federation of Teachers while 31% trust the mayor. Parents of public-school students preferred the union by an even wider margin, with 69% telling pollsters that the UFT can be better trusted to do what's best for their children. By a margin of 47% to 39%, voters said they believe the teachers union is playing a positive role in improving the city's education system.

New York City voters strongly disapprove of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's handling of the public schools, and are much more likely to trust the teachers' union than the mayor to advocate for students, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday morning. But voters also support many of Mr. Bloomberg's most recent education proposals, even though they have been opposed or questioned by the United Federation of Teachers. The poll found, for example, that voters support the mayor's desire to use teacher performance, not seniority, as the key factor when layoffs are required. They also favor his proposals to increase salaries for the highest-performing teachers and to make it easier to remove teachers who are chronically underperforming.

Like any veteran teacher, I have had occasional doubts about turning Big Education Decisions over to local school boards. I spent thirty years teaching in the same small-town district, which morphed from very rural farmland to the fringes of urban exodus during that period. The prosperous founding-family farmers who sat on our Board of Ed in the 1970s were supplanted by the "rising tide of mediocrity" hand-wringers in the 1980s, "basic education only" cost-cutters in the 1990s and technology enthusiasts in the 21st century.

When will our education system's big shots finally admit it? When will they concede they've created a corrupt system based on the notion that standardized tests will produce smarter students and better schools?

In a Sunday WaPo op-ed, Jay Mathews suggests that the Common Core State Standards Initiative is doomed to failure, and isn't a good idea anyway

The justification for mayoral takeover of school districts is that it pinpoints accountability. I've always believed, however, that the rationale sounds better on paper than it plays out in reality. The situation in the New York City school system is a case in point.

Last week, New York State's Supreme Court issued an important ruling on the state's teacher evaluations. The aspect of the ruling that got the most attention was the proportion of evaluations - or "weight" - that could be assigned to measures based on state assessments (in the form of estimates from value-added models). Specifically, the Court ruled that these measures can only comprise 20 percent of a teacher's evaluation, compared with the option of up to 40 percent for which Governor Cuomo and others were pushing. Under the decision, the other 20 percent must consist entirely of alternative test-based measures (e.g., local assessments). Joe Williams, head of Democrats for Education Reform, one of the flagship organizations of the market-based reform movement, called the ruling "a slap in the face" and "a huge win for the teachers unions." He characterized the policy impact as follows: "A mediocre teacher evaluation just got even weaker." This statement illustrates perfectly the strange reasoning that seems to be driving our debate about evaluations.

For a generation, there has been loose bipartisan agreement in Washington that the federal government has a necessary role to play in the nation's 13,600 school districts, primarily by using money to compel states to raise standards. But the field of Republican presidential candidates has promised to unwind this legacy, arguing that education responsibilities should devolve to states and local districts, which will do a better job than Washington.

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct a large-scale evaluation of comprehensive teacher induction. The purpose of the study was to determine whether augmenting the set of services districts usually provide to support beginning  teachers with a more comprehensive program improves teacher and student outcomes. This is the study's third and final report on the program's impacts.