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Before the New York City Department of Education released the name-and-number spreadsheet on the now-defunct Teacher Data Reports, I wrote and released grading criteria for news coverage. And now, with more than a week of coverage from a number of outlets, the grades (limited to major outlets where I read a critical mass of coverage).

Let's face it. The past few contracts have seen a major erosion of core rights for teachers, and not just here in NYC.  I am a chapter leader, so I have little time to write these missives in the blogoshphere, as I engage in daily combat for my members trying to protect what rights they have left. So, I think alarmist reactions are in order, especially given anything of complexity negotiated by our union.  I have been around long enough to remember a document called Teaching for the 21st Century. Most UFT members of unaware of its existence. Yet, it was the primary driver of their Article 8 rights, which include how teachers are to be observed and assessed as professionals. It came out in the late 90s and was heralded with much fanfare as a great collaboration between the Board of Education and the UFT.

Okay! Okay! I know teachers do not have tenure in the pure definition of guaranteed lifetime employment that was available in some higher education institutions long ago. Instead, teachers have fair employment and dismissal procedures that protect them from dismissal for arbitrary, capricious, and discriminatory reasons after completing a probationary period. I have been following with interest the legislative battle in Virginia over the "tenure" issue. It has been a very partisan battle with only a few Republican senators--those with firsthand information from relatives who are teachers--refusing to go down a road that appears punitive and unnecessary in this non-collective bargaining state. These senators' instincts are right, and let me provide some points to support them. First, the reason that the original laws were passed was to protect good teachers.

Why have our efforts fallen short? Over the past fifty years, U.S. school reform has been dominated by three major movements, aimed at promoting equity, increasing school choice, and using academic standards to leverage improvement. While all three have changed schooling in notable ways, none has brought about the needed level of general improvements because they mostly sought to improve education from the outside rather than the inside. To make real progress, we will have to think and act much more audaciously. The next round of reform must focus on the essentials of education-the quality of teaching and curriculum, and the means of funding them. Moreover, if we truly want to improve our schools sooner than later, then we must declare a good education to be a civil right for every child. This article explains the shortcomings of the three major reforms and proposes a bolder approach for future school reform. The current campaign for the presidency presents an opportunity to discuss this improvement agenda.

This month, nearly 4,000 educators and friends will come to Minnesota-the birthplace of chartered schools-to celebrate a few months early the 20th anniversary of the opening of the first chartered school in the nation, on Sept. 7, 1992. As the state Senate author of Minnesota's 1991 legislation that authorized the first chartered schools (or charter schools, as most people call them), I am in awe of the number of young lives touched by chartering today: 2 million students in an estimated 5,600 schools across the country. In September 2011, the Kappan/Gallup Poll recorded-for the first time-a 70 percent public approval rating for chartered schools. We have come a long way. And yet, I know that some charters are not delivering the quality education we envisioned 20 years ago. Accountability is a keystone of the original legislation, and we must, together, make that happen as part of our stand for quality chartered schools in the next decade. One thing we've learned is the importance of developing strong authorizers to hold chartered schools accountable. As we look to the future of chartering, it is important to revisit the origins and set the historical record straight. Here are some key facts that may surprise you and dispel a few common myths.

"My "golden age" in New York, the one that allowed a variety of experiments in trust to flourish, happened not by accident and not just because of a few good administrators. It was possible because of a short-lived sea change in the national political conversation. It came because for a while there was a public commitment to wage a war on poverty and on behalf of racial equality."

"I've been teaching for almost thirty years, and I don't know precisely when my colleagues and I became public enemy number one. But after reading Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch I'm getting a pretty good handle on why. "

"To building a lasting peace between teachers unions and communities of color, we can't forget their most painful battle of all."

"How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students"

"The charter movement turns 25 next year, but whether it's fulfilling the mission early advocates had envisioned is far from clear."

"There is nothing new about opposition to public-sector unionism. It has been a feature of American life for over one hundred years. But in some ways, the current wave of anti-unionism is a departure. Three different eras of opposition to public-sector unionism, including the current one, have been distinguished by distinct core arguments against collective bargaining for public employees."

Efforts by state legislators to curtail collective bargaining or destroy public-sector unions, abolish tenure, and decrease funding for education are spreading throughout the country. The scapegoating and vilification of unions and teachers, however, are not new. The current attacks have historical parallels, when cries of "Communist subversion" were used in New York City to silence dissenting voices in academia and to weaken faculty and teacher unionism.

The Save Our Schools Conference and March was the single most inspiring protest I have attended in the last thirty years.  To see public school teachers from more than forty states rally in defense of their maligned profession, and to hear the most important education scholars of our time tear apart the business/testing model driving education policy in this country, made me feel that I was part of a movement that was not only going to change school policies, but reinvigorate justice-organizing in a nation that has lost its way.

Montana and the U.S. Department of Education have ended a No Child Left Behind showdown after federal officials agreed to let the state reset its proficiency targets so more schools would make "adequate yearly progress" this year.

This summer, I attended my 50th high school reunion. My wife called my attention to the school's motto: Verum, Pulchrum, Bonum. I had no recollection that my school was devoted to "truth, beauty, goodness." Yet, 40 years after I graduated, I argued, in The Disciplined Mind, that the purpose of education, beyond acquisition of basic literacy, is to inculcate in students a sense of what is true and what is false; what is beautiful and what is boring or repugnant; what is good and what is evil. Our sense of truth comes from the scholarly disciplines-science, history, mathematics. Our sense of beauty comes from the arts and nature. Our sense of morality comes from reflection on the actions of human beings-historical figures, fictional characters, and contemporaries.

When Frederick J. Kelly invented the multiple-choice test in 1914, he was addressing a national crisis. The ranks of students attending secondary school had swollen from 200,000 in 1890 to more than 1.5 millionas immigrants streamed onto American shores, and as new laws made two years of high school compulsory for everyone and not simply a desirable option for the college bound. World War I added to the problem, creating a teacher shortage with men fighting abroad and women working in factories at home.

To anyone concerned with the state of America's schools, one of the more alarming experiences of the past few decades has been the sight of waves of innovative reforms crashing upon the rocks of our education system. Charter schools have popped up all over the landscape; vouchers are being implemented in more and more places; massive federal initiatives like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have invested billions of dollars in fixing our schools. And yet the results remain dismal: Millions of children still cannot read satisfactorily, do math at an acceptable level, or perform the other skills needed for jobs in the modern economy.

The Broad Residency in Urban Education announced today that it has placed its largest class to-date of 46 early career executives into 28 public education systems and public charter school organizations across the country, including the largest number yet of residents in state departments of education, where they will be supporting school districts in improving student achievement.

Few would claim that the tone of civic discourse in America is amiable.  Bitterness and invective are now hard-wired into our political life, with conservatives castigating Obama as an irresponsible, dangerous Marxist and liberals returning fire with the "craziness" of Michelle Bachmann (whose husband, they whisper, is a closeted homosexual). The spirit of rancor extends even to wonky issues like school reform.