"Teachers working in charters in an unnamed poor, rural Texas charter school district reported holding higher expectations of students and enjoying a more supportive teaching environment than colleagues who were working in traditional schools in the neighboring district. But the charter teachers had fewer opportunities for professional development and generally felt that the evaluation process was less fair, according to a new study that attempts to correct some of the problems with the existing research on differences between teachers in charters and traditional schools. "

"In this post, award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York raises some new questions about the Common Core State Standards and curriculum being developed around them."

"Proponents of the Common Core have likened the struggle to implement it to the Civil Rights Movement. As we reflect on the 50th anniversary of the height of that movement, we must consider how these standards and the related testing are threatening students' rights to education, not upholding them. As one critical example, the Common Core's strict interpretation of "close reading of a text" dismisses the notion that students' own thoughts and experiences, and how they connect to a text, are integral to reading. Rather, student voices are silenced in their own classrooms, and literacy is reduced to the ability to navigate standardized tests."

"Rooted in the gospel tradition, the song "We Shall Overcome" became an anthem of the African‑American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and then an assertion of struggle and solidarity worldwide. Solidarity is at the heart of both the song and the phrase "we shall overcome." Given that history, it's both perverse and predictable that Philanthropy magazine titled its spring 2013 cover story "They Shall Overcome." The long article-written by then editor-in-chief Christopher Levenick-profiles five of the wealthiest backers of free-market K-12 public education reform (publicly funded but privately run charter schools, publicly funded vouchers for private schools, evaluating teachers and schools based on students' standardized test scores, closing large numbers of schools based on test scores or to save money, and the like)."

"Jere Hochman, superintendent of the Bedford Central School District in New York responds here to Tom Friedman's column in the New York Times"

"AFT president Randi Weingarten has recently changed positions on value-added methods (VAM) for teacher evaluation, but maintains support for Common Core (CC). With that shift to rejecting VAM, based on the solid evidence base that shows high-stakes implementation of VAM is at least complicated if not misleading, I would like to request that Weingarten and AFT apply that same analysis to CC."

"Diane Ravitch, the education historian who has become the leader of the movement against corporate-influenced school reform, gave this speech to the Modern Language Association on Jan. 11 about the past, present and future of the Common Core State Standards. Here's her speech"

"On the very eve of the weekend celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Newark's state-appointed superintendent showed the citizens of Newark that they have no votes and they have no voice when it comes to the fate of their schools."

"The latest issue of the AFT American Educator publication contains an article that presents "Myths of the Common Core" and responds to each one with "facts." Tim Farley, principal of the Ichabod Crane Elementary/Middle School in Valatie, New York, did not agree with the publication's definition of the facts. Here is his rebuttal"

"If you remember your No Child Left Behind history, 2014 is the year that all children were supposed to be scoring proficient on standardized tests. That was, of course, a ridiculous goal, which the authors of the bill knew full well when they wrote it, and a symbol for just how misguided school reform has become. Here, George Wood, superintendent of Federal Hocking Local Schools, offers four things that reform really should be targeting. He is the executive director of the Forum for Education and Democracy  and board chair of The Coalition of Essential Schools."

"Teacher turnover - the rates at which teachers leave the profession and switch schools - is obviously a very important outcome in education. Although not all turnover is necessarily a "bad thing" - some teachers simply aren't cut out for the job and leave voluntarily (or are fired) - unusually high turnover means that schools must replace large proportions of their workforces on an annual basis. This can have serious implications not only for the characteristics (e.g., experience) of schools' teachers, but also for schools' costs, cohesion and professional cultures."

"A group of expert researchers have published a new collection of articles about teacher evaluation and high-stakes testing and their consequences. The collection appears online in the Teachers College Record. It is called "High-Stakes Teacher Evaluation: High Cost, Big Losses.""

"Much has been made of late regarding the erroneous classification of 44 teachers in Washington DC as ineffective, thus facing job consequences. This particular erroneous rating was based on an "error" in the calculation of the teachers' total ratings, as acknowledged by the consulting firm applying the ratings. That is, in this case, the consultants simply did not carry out their calculations as intended. This is not to suggest by any stretch that the intended calculations are necessarily more accurate or precise than the unintended error. That is, there certainly may be far more - are likely far more than these 44 teachers whose ratings fall arbitrarily and capriciously in the zone whereby those teachers would face employment consequences. So, how can we tell… how can we identify such teachers."

"Insider here reviews the report on charter schools by the NYC Independent Budget Office. The report covered only the early grades, not the middle grades or high school years."

"General students from kindergarten to third grade are retained by the privately operated schools at a slightly higher rate than district schools, according to the study report by the Independent Budget Office released Thursday."

"One of the most common claims against charter schools is that they "push out" special education students. The basic idea is that charter operators, who are obsessed with being able to show strong test results and thus bolster their reputations and enrollment, subtlety or not-so-subtlety "counsel out" students with special education plans (or somehow discourage their enrollment). This is, of course, a serious issue, one that is addressed directly in a recent report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), which presents an analysis of data from a sample of New York City charter elementary schools (and compares them to regular public schools in the city)."

"As the new year begins, I've been pondering what I might recommend as guiding principles for the path forward for education policy in New York City under its new Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who is often referred to on Twitter as BDB. So here are my thoughts for the way forward, from one BDB (Bruce D. Baker) to another. Note that I had drafted much of this content last spring when convening with a group of scholars to discuss the path forward for NYC education policies. Not being as well versed in the specifics of NYC education policies, but having at least written academically about some, I kept my ideas broad, and applicable to many educational settings across the U.S."

"There is a serious flaw in the national Common Core English/Language Arts reading standards and it is the result of the ideological point of view about literacy and learning of those who developed it. I am not sure if it was done intentionally or if they are actually unaware of it. The flaw is uncertainty about how we know what a document really means."

"What's interesting is precisely how varied the list of "reformers" is-representing contradictory developments that still have an impact on American public schools.   It helps see how the back and forth of our history was responding to changes in society itself and how many different viewpoints have influenced schooling, reflecting its specific time and circumstances."

"Arthur H. Camins, director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., suggests a new way to make progress in education policy - through engineering design thinking. "