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"I'm an advocate for charter schooling. Regular readers of RHSU know that this is not because I'm convinced they're the answer to the "achievement gap" or to driving up math and reading scores, but because chartering offers an opportunity to rethink how we go about teaching, learning, and schooling. In that context, I've long been concerned that our rethinking is almost entirely focused on reading and math scores and graduation rates and the result can yield a reflexive, frail conception of schooling. If we're going to reinvent schools, I'd like us to do so in a manner that respects the broad purpose of the schoolhouse, which means paying due attention to the arts, to a rich curriculum, and, perhaps most important of all, to helping students develop as moral individuals and citizens. "

"As part of Teacher Appreciation Week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan published an open letter to America's teachers. Perhaps Secretary Duncan writes his own speeches-but the fact that the U.S. Department of Education lists 124 employees for the Office of Communications and Outreach suggests otherwise. Perhaps the secretary's mind wanders as he reads the texts prepared for him-and perhaps he inserts his own thoughts as he reads along. Here's Duncan's letter, along with what I imagine just what those thoughts might be."

Barely one in three city eighth-graders met the bar for reading standards on state tests this year -- the lowest mark for that group since tests were changed in 2006, new data show.

Who should read this book? Anyone who is touched by public education - teachers, administrators, teacher-educators, students, parents, politicians, pundits, and citizens - ought to read this book. It will speak to educators, policymakers and citizens who are concerned about the future of education and its relation to a robust, participatory democracy. The perspectives offered by a wonderfully diverse collection of contributors provide a glimpse into the complex, multilayered factors that shape, and are shaped by, institutions of schooling today. The analyses presented in this text are critical of how globalization and neoliberalism exert increasing levels of control over the public institutions meant to support the common good. Readers of this book will be well prepared to participate in the dialogue that will influence the future of public education in this nation - a dialogue that must seek the kind of change that represents hope for all students.

As you are getting ready to go back to school, you may be feeling pleased that your child is going to a school with high test ratings. Before you decide if that's a good thing or not, read this story. You may be shocked at the lengths many schools and districts will go to, to raise their test scores.  After reading, go to your child's school and start asking some hard questions. Need help with the questions. Contact me.

I've already beaten the issue of the various flaws, misrepresentations and outright data abuse in the Third Way middle class report into the ground on this blog. And it's really about time for that to end. Time to move on. But here is one simple illustration which draws on the same NAEP data compiled and aggregated in the Middle Class report. For anyone reading this post who has not already read my others on the problems with the definition of "Middle Class," and related data abuse & misuse please start there

Anybody paying attention to the course of modern school reform will not be very surprised by this news: Newly released SAT scores show that scores in reading, writing and even math are down over last year and have been declining for years. And critical reading scores are the lowest in 40 years.

If you wear reading glasses, please take them off for a moment and continue reading this blog. You can't? You won't? Well, now put yourself in the position of a child in a high-poverty school who needs eyeglasses but does not have them. In the richest country in the world, it is shocking, but it is a fact that a very, very large number of disadvantaged children who need glasses don't have them. A New York City study of middle school children found that 28 percent of them needed glasses, and less than 3 percent had them. Studies in Baltimore-- including the Baltimore Vision Screening Project in the 1990s--and many other places find the same.

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.

"Horace Meister, a regular contributor, has discovered a shocking instance of contradictory research, posted a year apart by the same "independent" governmental agency. The first report, published a year ago, criticized New York City's charter schools for enrolling small proportions of high-need students; the second report, published a month ago, claimed that the city's charter schools had a lower attrition rate of high-needs students than public schools. Meister read the two reports carefully and with growing disgust. He concluded that the Independent Budget Office had massaged the data to reach a conclusion favoring the powerful charter lobby. Eva Moskowitz read the second report and wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal called "The Myth of Charter School 'Cherry Picking.'" Horace Meister says it is not myth: it is reality."

A rare collaboration between charter schools and traditional public schools will expand to five more urban schools next year. The Learning Community, a charter school for kindergarten through eighth grade serving primarily low-income children from Central Falls, Pawtucket and Providence, is receiving $1.8 million to expand its nationally recognized reading program, free of charge to the selected Rhode Island schools.

The DRA is a test that very few students take because it is given only in schools that don't go above second grade. In all other elementary schools, the state uses the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP), a series of reading, writing, math and science tests used by Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermomt and Maine. Those tests start in grade 3. Last year, only 6 of the state's 168 elementary schools took the DRA, which makes Blackstone Valley Prep a big fish in a very small pond. "There are a lot of schools that are high-performing that don't take this test," said Krieger.

An urban school district and a charter school have forged a successful - and (unusual - partnership to share best teaching practices and collectively support early reading proficiency.

"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. "

City kids improved on the annual state tests this year -- edging up nearly 2 percentage points in reading and 4 percentage points in math compared with last year, education sources told The Post.

"Once upon a time, our society decided that all children should be educated through 12th grade at public expense. But completion of 12th grade does not mean what it once did. If that is so, does our society not need to adjust its ambitions and make college as accessible an element of public education as completion of high school used to be? We need to attend not only to post-12th grade educational opportunities, but also to preschool programs of the kind that President Obama endorsed in his inaugural address in January. This is the only way we can begin to move toward genuine equality of opportunity. Without that emphasis, K-3 students from low-income families start their education with an often crippling educational deficit. This is not fanciful rhetoric; it is well-established fact: Know how to read by the end of third grade, and your prospects are bright; don't know, and you are doomed."

"In the Michael Bloomberg era of school reform, we hear a lot about rising educational standards. "When Dennis Walcott became chancellor," Josh Thomases, a deputy chief academic officer in the city's Department of Education, tells the Voice, "one of his first acts was to say the correct bar was no longer a high school diploma, but career and college readiness." Put another way, New York City officials openly admit that a high school diploma earned in our public schools today does not mean that a student is ready for college. In fact, 80 percent of New York public school graduates who enrolled in City University of New York community colleges last fall still needed high school level instruction-also known as remediation-in reading, writing, and especially math. Despite the department's proclamations, that percentage is up, not down, from 71 percent a few years ago."

"When the Florida Board of Education voted this month to set different goals for student achievement in reading and math by race and ethnicity, among other guidelines, the move was widely criticized as discriminatory and harmful to blacks and Hispanics. But the state, which has been required to categorize achievement by racial, ethnic and other groups to the federal government for more than 10 years, intends to stand by its new strategic plan. Education officials say the targets, set for 2018, have been largely misunderstood."

What better proof for all the ills of many charter schools, but especially those under Eva Moskowitz than this handbook for parents from Eva's scam factory, accused of trying to avoid Spanish speaking kids, often the lowest scorers due to language issues? And what a nice way to force out non-compliant parents, especially Spanish speaking who can't read the handbook in English. If a public school were to try this they would be brought up on charges.

Job satisfaction is something we all care about. It also happens to be something we care more about when we have less and less of it. It's a hard balance to maintain because we have satisfaction when we are with our students but we lose that same satisfaction when we read negative press or hear politicians use bad education statistics in sound bites. We certainly cannot control what they say about us but we can control how we react.