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While there is widespread agreement on the importance of teacher quality, there is considerable disagreement about what should be done to improve it, or even what teacher quality means. A growing number of researchers, policy makers, and writers in the popular press are promoting a seemingly simple and straightforward solution: remove poor quality teachers from the workforce. In the past, policy makers have dismissed this "draconian" solution over concerns about teacher rights and strong opposition from teachers unions, but many are re-thinking their position in view of claims that this approach is justified on the grounds of social justice and the ends it will achieve for students.   Despite the growing popularity and the seemingly common sense appeal of this approach to improved teacher quality, it suffers from three fundamental flaws that prevent it from accomplishing all that its advocates claim it will

District 15 parents, legal advocates and other supporters from the community held a press conference outside of 284 Baltic Street, between Court and Smith Streets, Wednesday morning to announce their intention to sue founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools Eva Moskowitz, Brooklyn Success Academy III Trustees and the DOE over the alleged unlawful authorization of the charter school. The impassioned speeches were as chilly as the temperature on the sidewalk. "The Success Charter Network and Eva Moskowitz with the participation of the SUNY Board of Trustees have unlawfully co-located in this building in violation of the school's charter and charter law," said Sabrina Tann, senior staff counsel for Advocates for Justice.

"While reasonable people can disagree about whether this is "privatization," the question remains as to whether the market mechanisms embodied within the charter model lead to more socially just outcomes.  After all, many might be willing to accept privatization if choice and competition produce more equitable and just opportunities, especially for disadvantaged children. However, an increasing consensus in research circles suggests that charter schools may exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, the chronic inequity in America's education system.  Despite its roots as an initiative to promote more equitable outcomes, multiple studies have linked charter programs with segregation. "

"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."

The Department of Justice and four states on Monday filed a multibillion-dollar fraud suit against the Education Management Corporation, the nation's second-largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for the $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it had received from July 2003 through June 2011.

The Save Our Schools Conference and March was the single most inspiring protest I have attended in the last thirty years.  To see public school teachers from more than forty states rally in defense of their maligned profession, and to hear the most important education scholars of our time tear apart the business/testing model driving education policy in this country, made me feel that I was part of a movement that was not only going to change school policies, but reinvigorate justice-organizing in a nation that has lost its way.

A new study by the Council of State Governments Justice Center took a close look at how often students in Texas are disciplined by in- and out-of-school suspension and expulsion. Among the findings: Students with disabilities are especially likely to be punished by one or more of these methods. The researchers looked at records for close to one million students and found that 75 percent of middle and high school students with disabilities in the nation's second-largest public school system were suspended, expelled, or both at least once. That compares to about 55 percent of students without a disability.

Smiley & West take to the road on a 15-city nationwide tour to highlight an invisible issue in Washington's halls of power - poverty in America. The Great Recession has left 1 in 7 Americans living in poverty with unemployment in many communities still on the rise. The war on poverty is the greatest policy failure in our society. Smiley & West will share the stories of real Americans, free of punditry and spin, in the hopes of changing government policy in the direction of justice and equality.

Opening its new term on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a case challenging an Illinois law requiring a daily period of silent prayer or reflection. The appeal was one of hundreds that the justices turned away as their summer recess formally ended. Other education cases the court declined to take up involved the outsourcing of public school services to a private religious school, and discipline of students with disabilities.

It has been a difficult year for public education.  A fiveyears' overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and  Secondary Education Act, whose 2002 version we call  No Child Left Behind (NCLB), languishes in a divided  Congress.  Now Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says  he will grant states unilateral waivers from the law's most  punitive consequences, but the catch is that to qualify,  states must present accountability plans based on Duncan's  own favorite punishments for schools unable quickly  to raise scores-including sanctions like merit pay and  reduction of due process for teachers, school closure, and  rapid charterization.  The rhetoric of  school reform has little to do with the  lives of children or the daily work of  teachers.  Meanwhile a deplorable wave  of scapegoating school teachers continues  unabated.  

The legislative mandate was simple - keep kids in school if at all possible, suspension and expulsion having been identified as a point of entry for the school-to-prison pipeline. Passed in 2003, the Juvenile Justice Reform Act endorsed a wide variety of measures to reduce rates of juvenile incarceration. One such measure was support for in-school programs that reward students for good behavior rather than simply punishing them for acting out. It identified the state's higher than average suspension and expulsion rates as a cause for concern.

The practice of law in the U.S. is an adversarial system that is widely accepted as being the most effective way of ensuring that justice is done. This is the antithesis of the way educating the young is supposed to be conducted in this country. Nevertheless, the system too often still pits teachers against principals, to the detriment of students.

Bad Teacher offers the most straightforward accounting of the underlying assumptions of paying-for-scores that I've yet seen, in print or on screen. A lousy, unmotivated teacher who desires breast implants is inspired to work much harder to earn the cash. There you go: honest, straightforward, incentive-driven--and utterly disinterested in social justice or the larger purposes of schooling. She changes her behavior because there are rewards for doing so. There's no expectation that the change is permanent, that it alters the content of her character, or even that she'll teach any better--only that she'll teach harder. And, it should come as no surprise that she looks for an opportunity to cheat when her other efforts aren't getting it done. At the same time, for all these thorny issues, I'd absolutely argue that her kids are better off after she learns about the bonus than they were before.

On Oct. 1, 650 people attended the 4th annual Northwest Teachers for Social Justice conference in Seattle.  Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp gave a well-received talk on "Challenging Corporate Ed Reform." He ended on an uplifting note with " 10 hopeful, tangible signs of organizing resistance and alternatives to the corporate reform agenda."    The following is an excerpt from that presentation.

"Value Added Models (VAMs) are irresistible. Purportedly they can ascertain a teacher's effectiveness by predicting the impact of a teacher on a student's test scores. Because test scores are the sin qua non of our education system, VAMs are alluring. They link a teacher directly to the most emphasized output in education today. What more can we want from an evaluative tool, especially in our pursuit of improving schools in the name of social justice? Taking this a step further, many see VAMs as the panacea for improving teacher quality. The theory seems straightforward. VAMs provide statistical predictions regarding a teacher's impact that can be compared to actual results. If a teacher cannot improve a student's test score in relatively positive ways, then they are ineffective. If they are ineffective, they can (and should) be dismissed (See, for instance, Hanushek, 2010). Consequently, state legislatures have rushed to codify VAMs into their statutes and regulations governing teacher evaluation. (See, for example, Florida General Laws, 2014). That has been a mistake. This paper argues for a complete reversal in policy course. To wit, state regulations that connect a teacher's continued employment to VAMs should be overhauled to eliminate the connection between evaluation and student test scores. The reasoning is largely legal, rather than educational. In sum, the legal costs of any use of VAMs in a performance-based termination far outweigh any value they may add.1 These risks are directly a function of the well-documented statistical flaws associated with VAMs (See, for example, Rothstein, 2010). The "value added" of VAMs in supporting a termination is limited, if it exists at all."

"Wayne Au, editor of Rethinking Schools and co-editor of Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools, writes of the book, Badass Teachers Unite: "In this powerful collection of essays, education activist and historian Mark Naison offers teachers, parents, students and anyone else concerned with the health of public schools in this country some invaluable tools in the fight against corporate education 'reform.' Badass Teachers Unite is a clarion call for all of us to reclaim public education in the name of social justice.""

"The push for educational equity was a major part of the Civil Rights movement. Although we have made much progress from the days of segregated schools we have yet to achieve a system of education that is equitable for all children. Low-income children and children of color continue to be failed by our public school system. There is much work to done as we continue to march towards Dr. King's dream. Corporate education reform is not an ally in our fight for educational justice. We must not be fooled by those who seek to use the legacy of our struggle to turn a profit at the expense of our children's education. A strong democratic republic needs high quality public schools that offer a free and appropriate public education to all."

"The so-called Vergara trial in California, in which the state's tenure and layoff statutes were deemed unconstitutional, already has its first "spin-off," this time in New York, where a newly-formed organization, the Partnership for Educational Justice (PEJ), is among the organizations and entities spearheading the effort. Upon first visiting PEJ's new website, I was immediately (and predictably) drawn to the "Research" tab. It contains five statements (which, I guess, PEJ would characterize as "facts"). Each argument is presented in the most accessible form possible, typically accompanied by one citation (or two at most). I assume that the presentation of evidence in the actual trial will be a lot more thorough than that offered on this webpage, which seems geared toward the public rather than the more extensive evidentiary requirements of the courtroom (also see Bruce Baker's comments on many of these same issues surrounding the New York situation). That said, I thought it might be useful to review the basic arguments and evidence PEJ presents, not really in the context of whether they will "work" in the lawsuit (a judgment I am unqualified to make), but rather because they're very common, and also because it's been my observation that advocates, on both "sides" of the education debate, tend to be fairly good at using data and research to describe problems and/or situations, yet sometimes fall a bit short when it comes to evidence-based discussions of what to do about them (including the essential task of acknowledging when the evidence is still undeveloped). PEJ's five bullet points, discussed below, are pretty good examples of what I mean."

My theme for today: Whose children have been left behind?

Nearly 40 years have passed since the Fiscal Crisis budget cuts and our public schools now face a challenge more insidious and perhaps, more formidable. All across the nation, a poisonous coalition of multi billionaire business leaders, test and technology companies, charitable foundations and elected officials are pushing a nationwide education agenda that involves the introduction of high stakes testing at all grade levels, evaluation of teachers and schools based on student test scores, and the introduction of "competition" into public education by the creation of independently managed charter schools given special advantages in funding and recruitment.