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Following the blueprint from Gates and the other Business Roundtable education reform scammers, the Tennessee General Assembly passed laws last year that uncapped segregated corporate charter school expansion and opened the door to the fabulously-lucrative cyber school business, wherein underpaid adjunct teachers in their underwear monitor the "progress" of children working through stacks of 19th Century worksheets on their 21st Century IPads.  There is evidence, however, that citizens in Tennessee and elsewhere are coming to understand the economic and human costs of turning corporate America loose on their children to educate.  Work hard, be nice, indeed.  Recently the Blount County School Board unanimously rejected the county's first suburban charter school after 7 months of consideration and a final 5 hour meeting on August 2

A Palo Alto-based charter school network recognized for its innovative teaching of low-income students won approval late tonight to open 20 additional K-5 schools in the San Jose area within five years. Culminating a seven-hour meeting at which dozens of public speakers were sharply divided, the Santa Clara County Board of Education voted 5-2 to approve Rocketship Education's dramatic expansion. The decision positions the not-for-profit to become one of California's largest charter school operators. Speakers included San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, who was in favor of the expansion, and several school district superintendents, who were not.

In the start of what has become an annual ritual, the Panel for Educational Policy Wednesday night listened to hours of rowdy public comments opposing the city's policy of placing charter schools inside existing school buildings, then signed off on plans to do just that. The panel gave the go-ahead to a Success Charter school co-location in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, an affluent neighborhood where many parents and elected officials have said the school is not wanted.

If a well-heeled neighborhood of Los Angeles wanted better police protection, would it be OK for the residents to donate money to their local police station so it could assign an extra patrol car to their streets? Most people would rightly say no. Law enforcement is a public service; taxpayers support it for the safety of all, to be deployed as needed to provide the best protection for the city. Residents might hire a private security guard for their neighborhood, but they cannot reshape public allocations of resources to benefit themselves through private donations. So is it all right, then, for parents to lavish donations on one school, providing it with art and music classes, instructional aides and extra library hours, while a neighboring school in the same district might have none of those?

Ask yourself why you or someone you know chose a profession in education for a living.  Is it because of the paycheck? Do you like the hours? Do the working conditions suit you? Is it because you couldn't decide on a major until halfway through your Bachelor's Degree and figured that teaching would be your best option?  If you answered yes to any of these questions then you are definitely in the wrong line of work. If you answered no and are committed to working tirelessly to ensure that all children learn and are successful at it then why do you not have a place at the education reform table?

Yesterday, I wrote a post (see "The message is to fire people sooner rather than later") commenting on the big (non peer reviewed) study featured in The New York Times about the long-term impact on students of having "high value added" teachers. One of the researchers was interviewed on the PBS News Hour last night, and a comment seems to me to point out a huge blind spot in the study.

A mayor's State of the City address offers a chance to look back on the previous year's accomplishments and lay out goals for the year ahead. Education has always figured in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's addresses, often as one of his chief focuses - but occasionally, as was the case in 2003, as a passing mention in a long to-do list. On Thursday, education was front and center in the mayor's address, dominating an hour-long speech that was defiant in tone and ambitious in content. It overshadowed other issues, like his push to increase the minimum wage.

A crowd of about 200 community leaders, elected officials and N.A.A.C.P. members turned out Thursday night to oppose the city's plan to phase out the middle grades of Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Harlem. In an unusual display of force, members of the District 3 Community Education Council and the school leadership teams spent about an hour grilling the city's chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, about the controversial decision, before the public comment period even began.

Being a teacher can be difficult: low pay, long hours, and the many challenges students bring into the classroom. If our teachers are going to be effective educators, we need to do a better job of keeping them happy. But what would teachers like to change to make their work life better? These are some of their responses.

As I'm sure many have already heard, yesterday the Board of Regents voted to approve Achievement First's application to establish a franchise network of "no excuses" charter schools in Providence. I've been pretty outspoken on this issue already, and there's a lot more I'd like to talk about (for example, how can a proposal that will drain so much money from Providence be given the thumbs up just hours after the city announced that it might not have enough money to finish out the year?). But my voice has already been heard enough in this debate. Now that the Board's decision has been made, my only hope is that the parents of Providence learn exactly what they are getting themselves into when Achievement First's well-financed PR campaign turns towards recruitment and its glossy posters and inspirational videos start appearing. Towards that end, I want to share a letter recently written by a former Achievement First parent who felt the need to warn families in Rhode Island about the damage an Achievement First education has the potential to inflict on their children.

Last week, I was talking to a couple planning to leave a D.C. charter school. They liked the school well enough. But the commute - from home, to school, to work - had reached two hours a day. As the couple waited to close on a house in Virginia, they knew they would miss the District. But they looked forward to walking to their neighborhood school.  I thought about this family while digging into the new $100,000 study of D.C. schools sponsored by the charitable arm of Wal-Mart. The study's big takeaway: There are not enough "top-performing" schools in working-class D.C. neighborhoods. This is not exactly news. But their solution - close some neighborhood and charter schools and replace them with more charter schools - makes no sense given the rest of the study's findings.

Efforts to improve our schools have always been spurred on by comparisons between our nation and others, which usually find us somewhere in the middle of the pack. In the 1950s the Russians were winning the space race because Ivan studied 12 hours a day, while his American counterpart goofed off at the soda parlor. In 1983, once again, the nation was "at risk" because we had allowed our standards to fall so low.

By day, Wade Brosz teaches American history at an A-rated Florida middle school. By night, he is a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. Brosz took the three-night a week job at the gym after his teaching salary was frozen, summer school was reduced drastically, and the state bonus for board certified teachers was cut. He figures that he and his wife, also a teacher, are making about $20,000 less teaching than expected to, combined.

The Cuomo Education Commission had its first and only public hearing in NYC for three scant hours this morning and they packed us all in a small cafeteria room at Hostos College in the Bronx.

Within hours of the publication of the Teacher Data Reports (TDRs) last Friday, the UFT began to hear stories of teachers and their families being hounded by news reporters from the New York Post. On Friday evening, New York Post reporters appeared at the door of the father of Pascale Mauclair, a sixth grade teacher at P.S. 11, the Kathryn Phelan School, which is located in the Woodside section of Queens. They told Mauclair's father that his daughter was one of the worst teachers in New York City, based solely on the TDR reports, and that they were looking to  interview her. They then made their way to Mauclair's home, where she told them that she did not want to comment on the matter. The Post reporters rang Mauclair's bell and knocked on her window all Saturday morning. She finally called the police, who told the reporters that since they were inside her private housing development, they were on private property and had to leave. The reporters rang the bell again, leading to a second visit from the police and a final warning to leave. Later, Mauclair's neighbors told her that that the Post reporters had been asking them questions about her.

Newt Gingrich has some unconventional ideas about education reform. He wants every state to open a work-study college where students work 20 hours a week during the school year and full-time in the summer and then graduate debt-free. In poverty stricken K-12 districts, Mr. Gingrich said that schools should enlist students as young as 9 to14 to mop hallways and bathrooms, and pay them a wage. Currently child-labor laws and unions keep poor students from bootstrapping their way into middle class, Mr. Gingrich said.

"Dear Governor Christie, Yesterday I took the opportunity to come hear you speak on your campaign trail. I have never really heard you speak before except for sound bytes that I get on my computer. I don't have cable, I don't read newspapers. I don't have enough time. I am a public school teacher that works an average of 60 hours a week in my building. Yes, you can check with my principal. I run the after-school program along with my my classroom position. I do even more work when I am at home. For verification of this, just ask my children. I asked you one simple question yesterday. I wanted to know why you portray NJ Public Schools as failure factories. Apparently that question struck a nerve. When you swung around at me and raised your voice, asking me what I wanted, my first response "I want more money for my students." Notice, I did not ask for more money for me. I did not ask for my health benefits, my pension, a raise, my tenure, or even my contract that I have not had for nearly three years. "

"KIPP schools provide a valuable service to low-income students. It may not be scalable to a degree that will truly turn around education in struggling communities, but if nothing else KIPP should be studied to see if some of its DNA can be replicated and grafted onto the public school system."

Teacher pay is an entirely artificial concept unrelated to anything but union contracts and reference tables on the number of years spent teaching. Other than, say, relating it to the hourly scale for babysitting, teaching has no inherent market value. Sure, studies show the hours teachers put in, the value of good educators on student lives, and the horror show of failed school systems. But no one has figured out--or wants to figure out--a good way to measure teacher pay.

Education reformer Diane Ravitch gave a keynote speech Friday at the Save Our Schools and National Call to Action, speaking for one hour on the history of education while offering a litany of rebukes aimed at policymakers and stakeholders in toe with President Obama's Race to the Top programs.