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This report highlights the perceptions of parents, whose opinions are rarely sought and whose voices tend to be lost in decisions about how assessments are developed, administered and used. Parents are key consumers of assessment information-and, as taxpayers, they pay for assessments. Classroom teachers and district administrators have the most practical and personal experience with the day-to-day impact of assessments and accountability. Their perceptions matter.

Opening a new phase for the Obama administration's role in education reform, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signaled interest in applying for the revamped, district-level Race to the Top competition. "The idea ... that districts will now be allowed to compete for Race to the Top in states like mine, where they haven't really wanted to have a competitive bid, is really heartening," Villaraigosa said, speaking on a Friday morning panel with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Emanuel and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "We will now, on our own, be able to put our performance, our reforms, our changes with an idea toward a set of results ... and not be tied to what goes on at the state level," Emanuel said, who went on to describe the district-level competition as "a significant change."

The Hechinger Report has spent the past 14 months reporting on teacher-effectiveness reforms around the country, and has examined value-added models in several states. New York City's formula, which was designed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has elements that make it more accurate than other models in some respects, but it also has elements that experts say may increase errors-a major concern for teachers whose job security is tied to their value-added ratings.

It will probably take more than a billion dollars in the bank to run for President of the United States in 2016. It looks like New York State Governor is already lining up corporate support. My concern is that he will sell out the education of New York State's children to for-profit companies, particularly Pearson, to position himself for the run.

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner) Over on the Shanker Blog of the American Federation for Teachers, Matthew DiCarlo writes a thoughtful but ultimately misguided post A Dark Day for Education Measurement in the Sunshine State.

Why have our efforts fallen short? Over the past fifty years, U.S. school reform has been dominated by three major movements, aimed at promoting equity, increasing school choice, and using academic standards to leverage improvement. While all three have changed schooling in notable ways, none has brought about the needed level of general improvements because they mostly sought to improve education from the outside rather than the inside. To make real progress, we will have to think and act much more audaciously. The next round of reform must focus on the essentials of education-the quality of teaching and curriculum, and the means of funding them. Moreover, if we truly want to improve our schools sooner than later, then we must declare a good education to be a civil right for every child. This article explains the shortcomings of the three major reforms and proposes a bolder approach for future school reform. The current campaign for the presidency presents an opportunity to discuss this improvement agenda.

Little did I know when I posted a piece on the NYC Public School Parents blog on April 19 revealing that there was a passage on the eighth-grade New York state exam about a race between a talking pineapple and a hare that a month later, people would still be talking about it. I've broken quite a few stories in my time, but none has had the viral velocity of this scandal.

The media react with alarm every time the NAEP scores appear because only about one-third or so of students is rated "proficient." This is supposed to be something akin to a national tragedy because presumably almost every child should be "proficient." Remember, under No Child Left Behind, ALL students are supposed to be proficient in reading and math by the year 2014. Since I served on NAGB for seven years, I can explain what the board's "achievement levels" mean. There are four levels. At the top is "advanced." Then comes "proficient." Then "basic." And last, "below basic."

"AFT president Randi Weingarten has recently changed positions on value-added methods (VAM) for teacher evaluation, but maintains support for Common Core (CC). With that shift to rejecting VAM, based on the solid evidence base that shows high-stakes implementation of VAM is at least complicated if not misleading, I would like to request that Weingarten and AFT apply that same analysis to CC."

"In this post, award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York raises some new questions about the Common Core State Standards and curriculum being developed around them."

"Two years ago, Kevin Kosar, a former graduate student of mine, conducted an Internet search for the term "failing school." What he discovered was fascinating. Until the 1990s, the term was virtually unknown. About the mid-1990s, the term began appearing with greater frequency. With the passage of No Child Left Behind, the use of the expression exploded and became a commonplace."

"Let's consider what we know now about the major education reform agendas currently impacting out schools"

"Instead, she encourages educators, parents and lawmakers to think as citizens rather than consumers when it comes to education. Ravitch's vision for education reform starts at ground level with each person supporting public education as a civic responsibility."

"Where's the big money in privatization? Take it from the teachers."

"Technology is transforming American education, for good and for ill. The good comes from the ingenious ways that teachers encourage their students to engage in science projects, learn about history by seeing the events for themselves and explore their own ideas on the Internet. There are literally thousands of Internet-savvy teachers who regularly exchange ideas about enlivening classrooms to heighten student engagement in learning. The ill comes in many insidious forms."

"Yesterday gave us the release of the 2013 NAEP results, which of course brings with it a bunch of ridiculous attempts to cast those results as supporting the reform-du-jour. Most specifically yesterday, the big media buzz was around the gains from 2011 to 2013 which were argued to show that Tennessee and Washington DC are huge outliers - modern miracles - and that because these two settings have placed significant emphasis on teacher evaluation policy - that current trends in teacher evaluation policy are working - that tougher evaluations are the answer to improving student outcomes - not money… not class size… none of that other stuff."

"Billionaires like privately managed schools. Parents are lured with glittering promises of getting their kids a sure ticket to college. Politicians want to appear to be champions of "school reform" with charters. But charters will not end the poverty at the root of low academic performance or transform our nation's schools into a high-performing system. The world's top-performing systems - Finland and Korea, for example - do not have charter schools. They have strong public school programs with well-prepared, experienced teachers and administrators. Charters and that other faux reform, vouchers, transform schooling into a consumer good, in which choice is the highest value."

"There is a widening gulf - a not-so-grand canyon - between how our school community in the Lower Hudson Valley sees the world and how our state education leadership sees the same old world. As an education reporter covering the state-imposed reforms, I am repeatedly struck by this dichotomy. Everyone professes to be in the education game for the kids - the very same kids - yet the state Board of Regents and Commissioner John King find themselves in an increasingly nasty stare-down with this region and Long Island, plus lots of folks from New York City and the rest of this vast state."