Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

I entered the fight against the 'reformers' back in February after hearing Duncan claim that a school in Chicago got dramatic results by shutting down and replacing with a charter school in the same building with the same kids, but with different adults. It was important for Duncan to have at least one 'miracle school' to prove that his style of reform was reaping results. Knowing this couldn't possibly be true, I investigated and found him to be using statistics in a very misleading way. This spurred my contacting the 'leader' of the other side (are they 'anti-reformers' or just 'pro-research'?), Diane Ravitch who then featured my investigation in a New York Times OpEd which generated a lot of attention.

We hear a lot about "passion-based" learning, and although in theory it sounds ideal, there are many factors to consider in building an education system around something as intangible as passion.

Every time I hear about a school where there are allegations or proof of cheating on standardized testing, I reflexively think about roaches, or, rather, the adage that if you see one or two of the pests running across the floor, there are probably an army of others having a party in the kitchen.

In the early days of the education-reform movement, a decade or so ago, you'd often hear from reformers a powerful rallying cry: "No excuses." For too long, they said, poverty had been used as an excuse by complacent educators and bureaucrats who refused to believe that poor students could achieve at high levels.

Paul Krugman just finished speaking to an annual American Federation of Teachers conference in Washington, D.C. Unlike many of his fellow Times columnists--most notably David Brooks and Thomas Friedman, who tend to support standards and accountability reforms--Krugman rarely writes explicitly about education policy. Given his role as a sort of national spokesman for disaffected liberals, I tuned in with interest to hear what Krugman would say in front of an audience of teachers.

It's not often that we hear education reformers bragging in public about how they got the better of a teacher's union. But in the following remarkable video, Jonah Edelman, co-founder and chief executive officer of the Oregon-based nonprofit education reform organization Stand for Children, talks about how he and his organization maneuvered to get education reform legislation passed in Illinois this year, snookering union officials along the way.

The national media consensus is that New Orleans has discovered the miracle cure for urban education.  Their conclusion is largely drawn from data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education, which obviously has a vested interest in emphasizing the good and ignoring the bad in the post-Katrina education changes.  New Orleans is important in the national education debate, but not for the reasons we commonly hear; it is important because it is the beachhead for a national movement to remove schools from local democratic control and accountability.  The privatization trade-off is that the public sacrifices control of schools for a privatized system that delivers better education for the same tax dollar.  While the citizens of New Orleans certainly lost control of their schools, it cannot be said that they have received a better education, if that also means an equitable education, nor can it be said that it came at the same cost.

If you follow education research - or quantitative work in any field - you'll often hear the term "significant effect." For example, you will frequently read research papers saying that a given intervention, such as charter school attendance or participation in a tutoring program, had "significant effects," positive or negative, on achievement outcomes. This term by itself is usually sufficient to get people who support the policy in question extremely excited, and to compel them to announce boldly that their policy "works." They're often overinterpreting the results, but there's a good reason for this. The problem is that "significant effect" is a statistical term, and it doesn't always mean what it appears to mean. As most people understand the words, "significant effects" are often neither significant nor necessarily effects. Let's very quickly clear this up, one word at a time, working backwards.

"Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has written a smart article about the selling of Common Core. Its advocates use similar talking points, he says, but the most frequently heard lack evidence. You will hear these five points not only from corporate executives and Chamber of Commerce types, but from all CCSS supporters."

"Our guest author today is Stephen Lazar, a founding teacher at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City, where he teaches Social Studies. A National Board certified teacher, he blogs at Outside the Cave. Stephen is also one of the organizers of Insightful Social Studies, a grass roots campaign of teachers to reform the newly proposed New York State Social Studies standards. The following is Steve's testimony this morning in front of the Senate HELP committee's hearing on ESEA reauthorization."

"We hear the same refrain across the nation: public sector pensions are destroying our economy. The modest pensions paid to teachers, police officers, firefighters, and social workers are a threat to our future."

"Dani Lea, a sophomore at Vanderbilt University, believes that Teach for America (TFA) teachers in her high school in Charlotte, North Carolina, were detrimental to her learning experience and for those around her. Lea claimed that her principal didn't even know which teachers were members of TFA and which weren't. Upon hearing this, TFA co-CEO Matthew Kramer said, "That's not our lived experience." Lea responded, "That was my lived experience.""

"There is nothing new about Republican opposition to teachers unions, but in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that some Democrats have turned against them as well. In the following post we hear from a union leader, Bob Peterson, the president of the  Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association, about how he thinks teachers union must change to keep alive public education. This post first appeared in Rethinking Schools, a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization dedicated to improving public education."

The Obama administration is urging the U.S. Supreme Court not to take up an appeal from a school district ordered to provide compensatory tutoring because it failed to identify a student's disability.

Yesterday, national scholars on both sides of the debate over the constitutionality, educational value and cultural importance of the racial and ethnic integration of the schools gave testimony at the state Capitol. Joining them was the architect of Minnesota's last two legal challenges to school segregation, attorney Daniel Shulman, who criticized the state for failing to enforce the law and said he's willing to go back to court to fix that.

The New York City Department of Education ("NYCDOE") proposed to co-locate Brooklyn Success Academy Charter School 3 ("BSA3") in Building K293, located at 284 Baltic Street in Brooklyn, within the geographical confines of Community School District ("CSD") 15. BSA3 would be co-located in K293 with three existing NYCDOE schools: the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, serving approximately 415 students in grades 6-12 in the 2011-12 school year; the School for International Studies, serving approximately 522 students in grades 6-12 in the 2011-12 school year; and a District 75 program serving approximately 30 students at the high school level who are autistic, mentally retarded, or have multiple handicaps. The not-for-profit charter management organization (CMO), Success Charter Network, Inc., will operate BSA3. 

Videos of testimonies.

When I became a principal, nearly thirteen years ago, the era of high-stakes testing known as NCLB was just beginning. I was in a doctoral program at Teachers College at the time. I would argue with great passion for why we needed NCLB and testing to close the achievement gap. I can remember many a discussion with former commissioner, Thomas Sobol, who was one of our professors, on the topic of high stakes testing.  Frankly, Dr. Sobol was right, and I was wrong.  The downside of high-stakes standardized testing has far outweighed the good.

- Original Goals of Charter Schools - Reasons Why Goals for Charter Schools Have Not Been Achieved - Questions Policy Makers Should be Asking - Who Stole My Charter School Reform? - Quality versus Quantity

A week ago, a friend shared a video with me of a school superintendent giving a fiery speech at a Save Texas Schools rally. That is how I met the superintendent of Perrin-Whitt School District, John Kuhn.