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Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools by Steven Brill Simon and Schuster, 478 pp., $28.00                                                   As Bad as They Say? Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx by Janet Grossbach Mayer Empire State Editions, 166 pp., $16.95 (paper)                                                  

Since it's back-to-school season across the country, I wanted to celebrate a group that is often maligned: teachers. Like so many others, it was a teacher who changed the direction of my life, and to whom I'm forever indebted.

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.

It's not like we didn't say this would happen. FairTest takes a look at what to anticipate from next week's release of ACT scores.

More States Tie Tenure, Bonuses to New Formulas for Measuring Test Scores

When Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced last year that he would begin a campaign toward his current gig, it was only a matter of weeks before he introduced his "longer school day" proposal. The issue didn't raise many eyebrows during the campaign, but in recent months it has led to near-daily blows between the Chicago Teachers Union, the school board and the Emanuel administration.

Browsing All Posts filed under »New Jersey Charter Schools«

Browsing All Posts filed under »Value-Added Teacher Evaluation«

Browsing All Posts filed under »NJ Opportunity Scholarship NJOSA«

The American political discussion has finally turned to the right target: jobs.

If you watch the documentary "Waiting for Superman" or read Steven Brill's "Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools," you will learn that many advocates of school reform think they know how to increase teacher productivity: Rate teachers according to their students' performance on standardized tests and fire those who don't make the grade. But economic theory suggests several reasons why this approach will probably backfire.

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg (CMS) on postsecondary attainment. We match CMS administrative records to the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a nationwide database of college enrollment. Among applicants with low-quality neighborhood schools, lottery winners are more likely than lottery losers to graduate from high school, attend a four-year college, and earn a bachelor's degree. They are twice as likely to earn a degree from an elite university. The results suggest that school choice can improve students' longer-term life chances when they gain access to schools that are better on observed dimensions of quality.

Let me start with a simple, researched-based truth: Formative assessment-timely feedback gathered and reviewed during the course of a learning experience that serves to 'inform' both teachers AND students and allows for the 'formation' of new learning plans-matters.

"I hope that you can share with your readers the nastiness that is taking place in Michigan. People around the country need to be made aware of just what lengths these people will go to attack teachers." - Dan Quinn

More highly rated teachers in D.C. Public Schools are accepting performance-based bonuses than in the past, American University Radio WAMU reports. Of the 670 teachers eligible for bonuses, 70 percent accepted -- a 10 percentage point increase over the previous year, in which 60 percent of the 636 eligible teachers took the offer, according to WAMU.

New Haven's new method of grading teachers spurred low performers to improve their game-and led 34 others to leave the school district, officials announced Monday in the first test of a nationally watched component of the city's school reform drive.

This new post from Ed News Colorado is in response to my critique of Student Growth Percentiles here: http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/take-your-sgp-and-vamit-damn-it/

Al Shanker was very concerned about the need to identify and replace incompetent teachers. The first time he wrote a column about it, his wife was one of the many people who warned him that the union's teachers would be up in arms (see here). Shanker wasn't worried, replying that "All of my members will read that, and they'll all agree, because not one of them will think that they are one of the bad teachers that I'm talking about."

KIPP, Inc. offers a draconian test factory model that specializes in its own patented varieties of behavioral sterilization and cultural neutering.  KIPP's Madison Avenue advertising campaign focuses on KIPP test scores, which are often higher than public school scores.  But then spending 60 percent more time in school drilling within a total compliance regime that regularly shoves out low performers has its own kinds of perverse rewards.

Anybody paying attention to the course of modern school reform will not be very surprised by this news: Newly released SAT scores show that scores in reading, writing and even math are down over last year and have been declining for years. And critical reading scores are the lowest in 40 years.