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Here is the speech that actor Matt Damon gave today to thousands of teachers, parents and others who attended the Save Our Schools march on the Ellipse near the White House to protest the Obama administration's education policies that are centered on standardized tests.

Once a staunch opponent of teachers unions and proponent of a decidedly conservative agenda on education reform, Diane Ravitch has emerged as an unlikely hero to public school teachers and administrators across the country by siding with teachers unions in their battle with charter school advocates and the Obama administration.

"I don't know where I would be today if my teachers' job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test." That was actor Matt Damon talking to thousands of teachers, parents, principals, school board members and other education activists who stood today for hours in 90-plus-degree temperatures near the White House to protest the standardized testing mania that is at the heart of the Obama administration's school reform policies.

This was written by Mike Rose, who is on the faculty of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and is the author of " Why School?: Reclaiming Education for All of Us " and " Possible Lives: The Promise of Public Education in America. "

Tim Eller, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said the state is engaging schools in a three-part pilot program of a teacher evaluation system that relies heavily on value-added measures -- a controversial yardstick that uses student test scores to determine the "value" teachers add to student knowledge over the course of a year. The idea has grown in popularity since President Barack Obama expressed his support for the system during the federal Race to the Top education funding competition last year.

At first glance, the billionaire libertarian Koch brothers and the Wake County, North Carolina, school board couldn't be more disparate. Charles and David Koch, the brains behind the massive Koch Industries conglomerate and the funders of so many right-wing political causes, are national figures, credited with (or accused of, depending on your political persuasion) launching the tea party movement and waging war on the Obama administration and its agenda. The Wake County public school board is, well, just that.

Public education has never been so divided, between those like Dr. Tisch, Commissioner John B. King Jr. and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who support the Obama administration's signature Race to the Top initiative and its emphasis on standardized tests and charter schools; and dissenters on the board, who call it a Race to the Bottom and put their faith in teachers as well as traditional public schools. The Race to the Bottom folks warn that the supposedly free fellows come at a stiff political price.

Two rapping teachers with a microphone tell it like it is: A  must see/must hear video!  They ask Obama to fire Duncan and appoint Diane Ravitch as Education Secretary.

Former District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was a frequent target at a forum on education on Martha's Vineyard last night. Rhee, who resigned as head of district schools after Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid last year, took shots from both education historian Diane Ravitch and Harvard sociologist Lawrence Bobo. The Massachusetts forum is an annual event organized by The Root's editor-in-chief, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. It took place just miles from where President Obama and his family were vacationing. 

PERHAPS THE VERY best thing about Steven Brill's new book is its title. The phrase "class warfare" has a double meaning, of course, and the book paints very clearly the deep economic cleavages that underlie the fierce education debates within the Democratic Party over such policy issues as charter schools, merit pay for teachers, and the role of poverty in achievement outcomes. In Brill's telling, the education class war pits a heroic group of entrepreneurial philanthropists, highly successful hedge fund billionaires, and idealistic Ivy Leaguers who join Teach for America against somewhat grubby and grasping rank-and-file public school teachers and their union leaders, who often put their own selfish interests above those of the children. In looking out for what is best for low-income and minority students, Brill contends, Wall Street hedge fund managers are a much more reliable ally than the middle-class teachers who educate schoolchildren every day. Brill's worldview is important to understand because it is typical of the outlook of the education "reform" community, including leaders of the Obama administration, and the president himself.

The Obama administration's new waiver plan (officially here, and covered extensively here, here, and here-and elsewhere, I'm sure) doesn't officially repeal the No Child Left Behind Act, but it is tantamount to making large-scale amendments to it. Which it does unilaterally, without even a thumbs-up from Congress.

The AFT's Randi Weingarten nailed it last week. Commenting on the unveiling of the Obama administration's NCLB waiver plan, she told the New York Times: "You're seeing an extraordinary change of policy, from an accountability system focused on districts and schools, to accountability based on principal and teacher evalutions."

Everyone knows that today every American's job is on the line, and that better schools mean better jobs. Schools and jobs are alike in this sense: Washington can't create good jobs, and Washington can't create good schools. What Washington can do, though, is shape an environment in which businesses and entrepreneurs can create jobs. It can do the same thing in education, by creating an environment in which teachers, parents and communities can build better schools. Last week President Obama, citing a failure by Congress to act, announced a procedure for handing out waivers for the federal mandates under the No Child Left Behind law. Unfortunately, these waivers come with a series of new federal rules, this time without congressional approval, and would make the secretary of education the equivalent of a national school board.

The Obama Administration's Plan for Teacher Education Reform and Improvement

Momentum appears to be gathering behind a U.S. Department of Education plan to hold teacher education programs accountable for the achievement of students taught by their graduates. At an event hosted here Friday by the think tank Education Sector, a diverse group of stakeholders, including Dennis Van Roekel, the president of the National Education Association, and Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach For America, spoke in favor of the initiative, which was first outlined in the Obama administration's fiscal 2012 budget request. ("New Rules for Ed. Prep Are Mulled," March 9, 2011.)

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.

American policy makers and pundits are in love with some foreign education systems and are working hard to bring their policies and practices home. Others have national standards and a uniform curriculum, so should America (Chester E. Finn, Julian, & Petrilli, 2006). Students in China and India spend more time in schools, so should American children (Obama, 2009). Other countries use national exams to sort students, so should America (Tucker, 2011). Teachers in other countries receive more training in content, so should teachers in America (Tucker, 2011). "Teachers in Singapore are appraised annually" and "our current evaluation system is fundamentally broken," so America must fix teacher evaluation and hold them accountable for raising student test scores (Duncan, 2010).