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Publishing teachers' ratings in the newspaper in the way The New York Times and other outlets have done recently is not a good use of performance data, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview yesterday. "Do you need to publish every single teacher's rating in the paper? I don't think you do," he said. "There's not much of an upside there, and there's a tremendous downside for teachers. We're at a time where morale is at a record low. ... We need to be sort of strengthening teachers, and elevating and supporting them."

The Virginia state legislature has been making headlines for discussing whether women should have to undergo a trans-vaginal ultrasound before having an abortion, but the same legislative body is receiving kudos, from the liberal New Republic, for seeking to abolish tenure for teachers in public schools. In backing the proposal, the editors of The New Republic drew a distinction between higher education, where they think tenure is appropriate, and K-12 education, where they want tenure "abolished." Universities are "our country's ideas factories," they write. "And so it makes a certain amount of sense that we would want university professors-the people our society relies on to explore ideas, including unpopular ones-to enjoy protections from ideological or intellectual retribution. But this rationale doesn't apply at the K-12 level." The editorial goes on to say that "there isn't a good" rationale for tenure in elementary and secondary education. "Indeed, tenure is so illogical that it's impossible to see why it shouldn't be abolished."

Taxpayer outrage arguments are in style these days (as if they ever really go out of style). Two particular taxpayer outrage arguments that have existed for some time seem to be making a bit of resurgence of late. Or, at least I think I've been seeing these arguments a bit more lately in the blogosphere and on twitter.  First, since now is the era of crapping on public school teachers and arguing for increased accountability specifically on teachers for improving student outcomes, there's the "I pay your salary so you should cower to my every demand" argument (I've heard only a few warped individuals take this argument this far, but sadly I have!).  Second, there's the persistent I pay for those schools and don't even use them argument, or the variant on that argument that I pay twice for schools because I send my kids to private schools.

Dear 8th Graders, I'm sorry. I didn't know. I spent last night perusing the 150-plus pages of grading materials provided by the state in anticipation of reading and evaluating your English Language Arts Exams this morning. I knew the test was pointless-that it has never fulfilled its stated purpose as a predictor of who would succeed and who would fail the English Regents in 11th grade. Any thinking person would've ditched it years ago. Instead, rather than simply give a test in 8th grade that doesn't get kids ready for the test in 11th grade, the state opted to also give a test in 7th grade to get you ready for your 8th-grade test. But we already knew all of that. What I learned is that the test is also criminal.

PBN: The partnership created between The Learning Community and Central Falls public schools has really raised the profile of your nonprofit school. How does this partnership work? ALVES: The partnership has four main components and I think part of the reason why it works so well is that it is comprehensive. It's not just one major slice of work we are doing but four pieces. We have grade-specific professional development, not just whole-school workshops that other professional-development organizations might put out. Our trainings are grade-level specific. So all the first-grade teachers go to a first-grade teacher workshop that is very targeted and actually ends up being more effective.

So, let's look at a few big old schools and the new ones that replaced them in the same building. In particular let's look at the schools' comparative reading levels and comparative math. Until very recently, I didn't have these files, and until very recently I didn't think about same-building schools (called campus schools) too much, either. But then, the DOE made an inaccurate and unsupported claim about one of these campuses, and a few weeks later, Communities for Change set the record straight. The DOE's claim was the usual one ("similar" kids, astronomically better results). But the report from Communities for Change, showed that campus schools across the city were serving much lower concentrations of high-need special education students than the schools that they replaced. Before the old Seward shut down, for example, the concentration of self-contained students was 9%. In 2011, the new campus schools served 0%. Seward Park campus is in Manhattan, and the new schools earned As and Bs. Like disability averages, school wide average scores give us a good indicator of whether or not kids are ready for high school. Here is a comparison between incoming scores at closed old high schools and at the new schools on their campuses. These are actually relative rankings, and the details are explained below.

Recently, there's been controversy over the motion picture "The Hunger Games" and the casting choice for Rue, a character that the book's author, Suzanne Collins, intended to be dark-skinned at the very least. Amandla Stenberg, a young black actress, plays Rue in a cast that also includes rocker Lenny Kravitz and actress Kimiko Gelman. Some fans expressed disappointment all over social media that they didn't think the character should be black and that they hadn't envisioned a black child as this character to whom they gravitated to so ardently in print. One search on Twitter for Rue leads to a set of tweets ranging from subtly questionable to strangely racist. Teens are the predominant target group for this movie. At some point, don't we as a society have to step in and question what we're teaching our children about race?

If you think there is too much emphasis on testing now take a look into the future. A couple of years down the road both the full implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the PARCC assessments will drop down out of the clouds.

Battles over school curriculums occasionally make national news, but quickly fade. However, the banning of the Mexican-American studies program in Tucson has assumed much greater significance. The action precipitated by the Arizona legislature - and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer -- brazenly suppresses educating a multicultural society in a school district where the majority of students are of Mexican descent. The documentary "Precious Knowledge: Arizona's Battle Over Ethnic Studies" brilliantly details the energy and critical thinking of students in the Mexican-American studies program as compared to the bigoted cliches of the politicians seeking to deprive them of the knowledge that empowers non-Caucasian young people.

...it's frightening to think that the Obama administration plans to "monitor" special education by test scores and to reduce the number of people on the ground.

On May 23, the Romney campaign released its education policy white paper titled "A Chance for Every Child: Mitt Romney's Plan for Restoring the Promise of American Education." If you liked the George W. Bush administration's education reforms, you will love the Romney plan. If you think that turning the schools over to the private sector will solve their problems, then his plan will thrill you. The central themes of the Romney plan are a rehash of Republican education ideas from the past thirty years, namely, subsidizing parents who want to send their child to a private or religious school, encouraging the private sector to operate schools, putting commercial banks in charge of the federal student loan program, holding teachers and schools accountable for students' test scores, and lowering entrance requirements for new teachers. These policies reflect the experience of his advisers, who include half a dozen senior officials from the Bush administration and several prominent conservative academics, among them former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former Deputy Secretary of Education Bill Hansen, and school choice advocates John Chubb and Paul Peterson.

You would think everyone would want to review the evidence before rushing to implement schemes that haven't been shown to work. But when folks like Michelle Rhee control the debate - a woman who crows about her changes to the Washington DC evaluation system when they had no discernible effect on student learning - politicians must feel they have to follow her lead. They need to urgently do something - anything! - to prove how much they care about kids.

Just now the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold the Affordable Care Act, President Obama's signature health-care initiative-including a controversial provision that would require individuals to buy health-care insurance. But what does this provision mean for schools? It could be more connected than you'd think, as research shows health-care disparities help drive achievement gaps among students.

"D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) recently announced a few significant changes to its teacher evaluation system (called IMPACT), including the alteration of its test-based components, the creation of a new performance category ("developing"), and a few tweaks to the observational component (discussed below). These changes will be effective starting this year. As with any new evaluation system, a period of adjustment and revision should be expected and encouraged (though it might be preferable if the first round of changes occurs during a phase-in period, prior to stakes becoming attached). Yet, despite all the attention given to the IMPACT system over the past few years, these new changes have not been discussed much beyond a few quick news articles. I think that's unfortunate: DCPS is an early adopter of the "new breed" of teacher evaluation policies being rolled out across the nation, and any adjustments to IMPACT's design - presumably based on results and feedback - could provide valuable lessons for states and districts in earlier phases of the process. Accordingly, I thought I would take a quick look at three of these changes."

"The accountability provisions in Virginia's original application for "ESEA flexibility" (or "waiver") have received a great deal of criticism (see here, here, here and here). Most of this criticism focused on the Commonwealth's expectation levels, as described in "annual measurable objectives" (AMOs) - i.e., the statewide proficiency rates that its students are expected to achieve at the completion of each of the next five years, with separate targets established for subgroups such as those defined by race (black, Hispanic, Asian, white), income (subsidized lunch eligibility), limited English proficiency (LEP), and special education. Last week, in response to the criticism, Virginia agreed to amend its application, and it's not yet clear how specifically they will calculate the new rates (only that lower-performing subgroups will be expected to make faster progress). In the meantime, I think it's useful to review a few of the main criticisms that have been made over the past week or two and what they mean."

"Teachers who opt to teach in charter schools think they understand the changes and challenges they will face as a result of their decision. But I doubt anything prepares them for a proposal that the Internal Revenue Service quietly released late last year ("Charter school teachers fear IRS rules change," The Washington Times, Feb. 12). If the change goes into effect, it would make more than 93 percent of teachers in the 5,600 charter schools operating in 40 states ineligible for state retirement plans."

"As the lights dimmed and the opening credits rolled during my preview of 'Won't Back Down,' I got a little nervous.  Based on some of the commercials I had seen, I thought there was a chance that it was going to be a good 'film.'  I do think that a good film could be made about any subject, even one I might not agree with its underlying premise."

"While at the DNC, I was lucky enough to be invited to a small gathering of public education supporters with Governor Dean and Randi Weingarten, who heads the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). I'm a tremendous fan of Governor Dean - in fact, I was a Deaniac before there was a netroots. I still think he's fantastic on so many issues close to the hearts of progressives. And I love the "50-state strategy." In fact, had I not had a second awakening as an engaged citizen and activist, inspired by Governor Dean's work, I probably wouldn't have been at the DNC at all. I'm grateful that he took the time to speak with us. Here's my recollection of what took place at the meeting."

"Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been pushing a school reform agenda backed by the Obama administration that is at the center of the strike that the Chicago Teachers Union is now waging in the third largest school district in the country. This is not about whether or not you think the union should have called a strike as it did on Monday, but rather about the central problem with the reforms that Emanuel has been advocating: There's no real proof that they systemically work, and in some cases, there is strong evidence that they may be harmful."

For much of the past decade, the New York City Department of Education has engaged in a variety of reform efforts, which have undermined public participation in the city's public school system. I was glad to see teachers, parents and students protesting with Occupy Wall Street on the doorstep of the Tweed building - the Department of Education's headquarters - last week. This movement belongs at the Department of Education. However, I think the outraged citizens have a real opportunity to shine a light on the root issue by heading uptown, to the McGraw-Hill Building, where standardized tests are created.