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"John King is leaving his job as commissioner of New York State schools commissioner to become a senior adviser to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with the "roles and responsibilities of the deputy secretary," according to the Education Department, which issued a statement giving King high praise for his work in New York. Some in New York think otherwise. Here's a piece by award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, who was named New York's 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. Burris has been exposing on this blog King's troubling record in implementing school reform program in New York."

"Why have those defending public education had such an uphill fight in crafting a compelling counter to the mainstream message that "public education is broken"? How can we break through this monotonous monopoly of thinking with an alternative message? As Noam Chomsky points out, the mainstream political discourse in America is largely shaped by media outlets under complete corporate control."

"Beverley Holden Johns, a nationally recognized expert in the field of disabilities, strongly disagrees with Arne Duncan. Duncan wants children with disabilities to be able to perform on the highest level of NAEP tests. She points out that NAEP was not designed for this purpose. Duncan unilaterally changed the requirements of the IDEA act, without Congressional authorization. Having changed NCLB without Congressional authorization, he must think that ignoring the law is routine. In Néw York, we learned how students with disabilities do when they took the Common Core test: 95% failed."

"Ms. Goldstein's book is meticulously fair and disarmingly balanced, serving up historical commentary instead of a searing philippic. A hate-read is nigh impossible. (Trust me, I tried.) While Ms. Goldstein is sympathetic to the unionized public-school teacher, she also thinks the profession is hamstrung by a defensive selfishness, harboring too fine a memory for ancient wounds. The book skips nimbly from history to on-the-ground reporting to policy prescription, never falling on its face. "

"What they saw should chill the ardor of the most doctrinaire followers of Milton Friedman. Vouchers began in Milwaukee nearly 25 years ago based on the claim that they would save poor black children from "failing" public schools. Today, Milwaukee should be a national symbol of the failure of vouchers. Yet state after state is endorsing vouchers, egged on by the Friedman Foundation and rightwing think tanks. Let's be clear. Vouchers, charters, and choice have failed the children of Milwaukee. The city ranks near the bottom of all cities tested by the federal NAEP, barely ahead of Detroit. Black children in Milwaukee score behind their peers in most other cities and states. Study after study shows they don't get better test scores than their peers in public schools."

"Several months ago, the American Statistical Association (ASA) released a statement on the use of value-added models in education policy. I'm a little late getting to this (and might be repeating points that others made at the time), but I wanted to comment on the statement, not only because I think it's useful to have ASA add their perspective to the debate on this issue, but also because their statement seems to have become one of the staple citations for those who oppose the use of these models in teacher evaluations and other policies."

"RTI raises many concerns. Some parents worry that RTI winds up denying children with learning disabilities services. One fear is that some parents don't think they can request an evaluation, or they are led to believe it isn't necessary."

"On March 3, the New York Times published one of their "Room for Debate" features, in which panelists were asked "How To Ensure and Improve Teacher Quality?" When I read through the various perspectives, my first reaction was: "Is that it?" It's not that I don't think there is value in many of the ideas presented -- I actually do. The problem is that there are important aspects of teacher quality that continue to be ignored in policy discussions, despite compelling evidence suggesting that they matter in the quality equation. In other words, I wasn't disappointed with what was said but, rather, what wasn't. Let's take a look at the panelists' responses after making a couple of observations on the actual question and issue at hand."

"I'm sure you've heard for years-even decades-that the public schools are failing; that teachers are lazy, incompetent and their labor unions are responsible for this so-called failure. The solution: fire the teachers, close the public schools and get rid of the labor unions. Then turn education over to private sector corporations run by CEOs who only answer to their wealthiest stock holders. For instance, Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdock and a flock of Hedge Fund billionaires. Let's see what you think after we go back to 1779 and walk through 235 years of history to the present. It won't take long-a few facts and a conclusion."

"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."

"Leonie Haimson is fed up with the line that the mainstream media has taken about education controversies. Reporters usually think that every protest is organized by the unions, defending their self-interest, and they are warring with high-minded reformers. She says this is balderdash! (Sorry, Leonie, my word, not yours.)   If parents hold a protest against high-stakes testing and against test-based teacher evaluations (which causes more time to be devoted to testing), most reporters will say the union made them do it, the union doesn't want to be held accountable.   Well, guess what? The unions are not leading the Opt Out movement. Many teachers support it, because they know how pointless the new tests are, but the great majority of people leading the movement are parents. They don't want their children to be pressured by fear of the Big Standardized Test, they don't want them to be ranked and labeled, they don't want them to hate school because of the endless test prep."

Yesterday, the NY State Assembly Education Committee held a rare hearing in NYC on the state and city's implementation of the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, the so-called "turnaround" schools, and how the entire program is in complete disarray.    The big news is that the city is determined to go ahead with turnaround model for 26 Persistently Low Achieving schools even if they receive any of the federal funds to do so. Turnaround  is an euphemism for closing these schools, firing much of the staff and reopening them in the fall with new names  There is massive confusion and no public input about the plans for these schools, and yet the city seems determined to close and reconstitute them, like lemmings going over a cliff, even at the city's taxpayers' expense.  Why?  Because they can. See Two Years In, Federal Grant Program To Improve Struggling City Schools Has Derailed (NY1); Plans to Close 26 Schools Will Proceed Regardless of Financing, City Says (Schoolbook) and Chancellor: Plan to Close, Reopen Schools Was Not Act of 'Revenge' (WNYC) and Walcott: Turnaround will happen even without federal funding (GothamSchools).  My testimony is here on how many these schools and their students have been systematically disadvantaged by overcrowding and extremely large class sizes; with no plans by the city or the state to do anything to address these deplorable conditions.

Check out Darren Marelli's brilliant video below, using clips from the press conference before the Feb. 9 PEP meeting.

The charter-run schools that are a part of the New Orleans Recovery School District have shown some dramatic gains in student performance, but the schools that are managed directly by the district have not shown the same level of improvement, according to a report on the tumultuous eight-year history of Louisiana's Recovery School District.

Findings from a survey of teachers.

"Let's take another trip back to Philadelphia for the day, because the reformy conversation around Philadelphia is just so darn illustrative of how reformy thinking works. Here's a synopsis of the reformy approach to pushing pre-established, fact free, ideological reforms:"

"There has recently been a lot of talk about teachers' views on education policy. Many teachers have been quite vocal in their opposition to certain policies (also here) and many more have expressed their views democratically - through their unions - especially in states where teachers have collective bargaining rights."

"As part of Teacher Appreciation Week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan published an open letter to America's teachers. Perhaps Secretary Duncan writes his own speeches-but the fact that the U.S. Department of Education lists 124 employees for the Office of Communications and Outreach suggests otherwise. Perhaps the secretary's mind wanders as he reads the texts prepared for him-and perhaps he inserts his own thoughts as he reads along. Here's Duncan's letter, along with what I imagine just what those thoughts might be."

Of all the states that have taken steps to rethink systems for preparing teachers, New York appears to be experimenting with the greatest variety of approaches.

The results from the recent Gallup/PDK education survey found that 71 percent of surveyed Americans "have trust and confidence in the men and women who are teaching children in public schools." Although this finding received a fair amount of media attention, it is not at all surprising. Polls have long indicated that teachers are among the most trusted professions in the U.S., up there with doctors, nurses and firefighters.