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"Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day, as well as National Teacher Appreciation Week. In various ways, millions of people are thanking their teachers for having made a difference in their lives, including President Obama, who held an official function at the White House today honoring the National Teacher of the Year. But a couple of other things are happening today as well."

While the Obama administration's proposed reform efforts continue the obsession with test scores and the folly of trying to be globally competitive without being globally competent, students in other countries are hard at work to ensure that they become globally competent. America is "woefully behind almost all other countries of the world, particularly industrialized countries" in terms of foreign language studies, as Marty Abbott, the education director at ACTFL, told Education Week's Erik Robelen. I have been aware of and worried about this well-known fact, but what I saw and heard over the last few weeks gave me more reason to worry.

National Education Association delegates blasted Education Secretary Arne Duncan, passing a resolution that orders the NEA president to "communicate aggressively, forcefully, and immediately" to President Obama that the teachers union "is appalled" by a number of things Duncan has said and done in the name of school reform. The resolution of the country's largest union (see below) includes a list of Duncan's actions and statements with which the NEA disagrees, including his standardized test-driven reform policies.

Randi Weingarten talked about possible impact of the $30 billion for schools included in President Obama's jobs bill, and she responded to telephone calls and electronic communications. Other topics included the No Child Left Behind waiver proposed by the Obama administration, the Occupy Wall Street protests, and the role education could play in the 2012 elections.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other state authorities are pushing a plan to evaluate all kindergartners as they enter school, to determine their readiness for the classroom. The proposed new requirement, which would take effect in the 2014-15 school year, aims in part at helping the state win an estimated $100 million in grants offered by the Obama administration to upgrade early-childhood education.

Jon Stewart showed considerable restraint this week when he welcomed Melody Barnes, President Obama's chief of domestic policy, on The Daily Show and she spoke about the administration's education reforms in a way that revealed how out of touch the White House is on the subject.

The Education Department will spend about $5 billion on the program, and even if you're thinking, hey, I could use $5 billion, consider this: New York won the largest federal grant, $700 million over the next four years. In that time, roughly $230 billion will be spent on public education in the state. By adding just one-third of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform. That includes rating teachers and principals by their students' scores on state tests; using those ratings to dismiss teachers with low scores and to pay bonuses to high scorers; and reducing local control of education.

""The big bad California STAR Test is in 27 days, everyone!" Mission High School history teacher Robert Roth announces at the beginning of an honors class in March. "The way you are going to feel this is we are going to go through events really quick. But don't worry, we'll look at some things more deeply after the test," Roth explains as 25 juniors trickle in. "I'm hecka bad at these tests," Marilyn* says out loud; she puts her head down on the desk. Roth walks over to Marilyn and puts his hands on her shoulders. "No, you are not!" he says. "You are not bad at anything that's important.""

Carr & Porfilio in the Journal of Inquiry & Action in Education, 4(1), 2011

The White House has announced its plan to grant waivers of the provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to states that agree to put in place the education reforms favored by the administration. Thus states that agree, for example, to adopt the Common Core state standards for what students should learn and to evaluate teachers for tenure based on student test gains will be freed from the consequences facing schools that fail to meet adequate yearly progress goals under NCLB. The reforms the administration seeks as a condition of granting waivers are the same that it put forward in its Blueprint for reauthorizing NCLB, and that it advanced in its Race to the Top competition using the $5 billion in discretionary funds made available to it by Congress under the Stimulus Act.

President Obama's decision to separate his jobs bill into individual pieces and push for funds to hire teachers and first responders first has so far failed to convince any Republicans lawmakers of its efficacy. And in large part, the pushback from the GOP has been fairly straightforward. As House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office argued in an email on Monday, the administration has already asked for and received billions of dollars in direct aid to states for the purposes of retaining teachers and putting firefighters and cops back to work -- and it hasn't made a lick of difference.