"According to labor journalist Micah Uetricht, it's high time for trade unions in the United States to decide whether they want to wither away and follow a "business unionism" model of concessions and shrinkage, or follow "social movement unionism," a bottom-up, democratic organizing strategy that is aligned with social justice movements throughout the country."

"It is all the rage among the pseudo-reformers to dismiss the importance of poverty. Although most of the pseudo-reformers grew up in affluence, attended elite private school, and send their own children to equally splendid private schools, they feel certain in their hearts that poverty is a state of mind that can be easily overcome. All it takes is one great teacher. Or three effective teachers in a row. Or lots of grit. Or a no-excuses school where children dress for success, follow rules without questioning, and act like little test-taking machines. One by one, the pseudo-reformers insist, they will end poverty."

"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. "

"When I read Paul Thomas's reflections on "choice," it reminded me of an exchange I had in conversation with John Merrow recently in Manhattan at the JCC."

"One of the biggest drawbacks of such teacher evaluation systems is that they have literally no instrumental value; that is, no states across the country have yet figured out how to use these data for instrumental or change-based purposes, to inform the betterment of schools, teacher quality, and most importantly students' learning and achievement, and no states yet have plans to make these data useful."

"That is the real status quo: a socioeconomically stratified society, largely (but not entirely) divided along racial lines, that is first and foremost interested in its own reproduction. And public education, as dictated by the reformy plutocrats, is a primary means of maintaining that status quo. That is the "end game.""

"When looking at changes in testing results between years, many people are (justifiably) interested in comparing those changes for different student subgroups, such as those defined by race/ethnicity or income (subsidized lunch eligibility). The basic idea is to see whether increases are shared between traditionally advantaged and disadvantaged groups (and, often, to monitor achievement gaps)."

"In the following post [Carol Burris] looks at irrefutable data to show that the test-based reforms are taking public education down the wrong road. "

"Where's the big money in privatization? Take it from the teachers."

"When schools choose, students with disabilities lose"

"As charter school proponents go to Albany this week to plead their case, let's examine the realities behind their claims of stretched resources, unique student demand and stellar academic results."

"With resistance to standardized test-obsessed school reform growing around the country, three dozen local, state and national organizations and individuals have now banded together in an alliance to expand efforts to bring sanity to education policy."

"A feature of the Obama presidency has been his campaign against the American public school system, eating way at the foundations of elementary education.  That means the erosion of an institution that has been one of the keystones of the Republic.  The project to remake it as a mixed public/private hybrid is inspired by a discredited dogma that charter schools perform better.  This article of faith serves an alliance of interests - ideological and commercial - for whom the White House has been point man. "

"For more than a decade now we have heard that the high-stakes testing obsession in K-12 education that began with the enactment of No Child Left Behind 11 years ago has resulted in high school graduates who don't think as analytically or as broadly as they should because so much emphasis has been placed on passing standardized tests. Here, an award-winning high school teacher who just retired, Kenneth Bernstein, warns college professors what they are up against. Bernstein, who lives near Washington, D.C. serves as a peer reviewer for educational journals and publishers, and he is nationally known as the blogger "teacherken." His e-mail address is kber@earthlink.net. This appeared in Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors."

"Dr. Zuger explains what happens to the brilliant young doctors who aced every standardized test (there were so many of them!), but were flummoxed when it came time to diagnose a complicated real-life problem presented by a patient. She gives examples of how these hotshots dealt with new situations: Badly. They looked for the right answer, but there was none. What was needed was judgment and experience, and they didn't have enough of either. Dr. Zuger sees these young doctors as victims of linear thinking, a very bad habit caused by taking too many standardized tests with a single right answer."

"The New York Regents are the masters of the non-response response.  The day after they published their recommendations entitled Adjustment Options to Common Core Implementation, this was the Newsday headline: Pullback on Common Core: Regents Delay Tougher NY Test Requirements for High School Students Until 2022. That headline on Tuesday came from the Regents' third recommendation: "Give students more time to meet the Common Core standards." That sounds impressive until you discover that nothing was pulled back at all."

"Cuomo apparently thinks that parents don't care about class size, or budget cuts, or layoffs, or loss of funding for the arts in their schools. No, he alone is the "lobbyist for the students," (as he once boasted), not their parents. Anyone who wants more money for schools must be fronting for the teachers' unions."

"Almost nothing gets education arguments roiling from reasonable to rancorous like charter schools. Through one lens, charters are "aggressive and entrepreneurial…[and] loosely regulated" institutions that are ultimately a "colossal mistake" undermining traditional public education. Through another, they're transformational places "generating extraordinary academic success with the most disadvantaged children," in sharp contrast to moribund traditional public schools. Easy as it is to fall into one or the other of these positions, each contributes to paralyze discussions of charters' flaws and merits. It would be nice if we could answer the question empirically. That's a perfectly intuitive starting point: how do charters perform vis-à-vis traditional public schools? Unfortunately, national data on charter school performance is mixed at best."

"Instead, she encourages educators, parents and lawmakers to think as citizens rather than consumers when it comes to education. Ravitch's vision for education reform starts at ground level with each person supporting public education as a civic responsibility."

"In the following post, veteran educator Stan Karp explains why the problems surrounding the implementation of the Common Core are less about the substance of the standards and more about the context in which they were introduced. Karp taught English and journalism in Paterson, N.J., for 30 years and is an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine, where this appeared."