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"A former public school teacher and union organizer picks his favorites."

"A couple of weeks ago, the website Vox.com published an article entitled, "11 facts about U.S. teachers and schools that put the education reform debate in context." The article, in the wake of the Vergara decision, is supposed to provide readers with the "basic facts" about the current education reform environment, with a particular emphasis on teachers. Most of the 11 facts are based on descriptive statistics. Vox advertises itself as a source of accessible, essential, summary information - what you "need to know" - for people interested in a topic but not necessarily well-versed in it. Right off the bat, let me say that this is an extraordinarily difficult task, and in constructing lists such as this one, there's no way to please everyone (I've read a couple of Vox's education articles and they were okay). That said, someone sent me this particular list, and it's pretty good overall, especially since it does not reflect overt advocacy for given policy positions, as so many of these types of lists do. But I was compelled to comment on it. I want to say that I did this to make some lofty point about the strengths and weaknesses of data and statistics packaged for consumption by the general public. It would, however, be more accurate to say that I started doing it and just couldn't stop. In any case, here's a little supplemental discussion of each of the 11 items"

""As I see it," wrote Paul Krugman, "the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth." Krugman himself is, of course, an economist (and a Nobel Prize winning one at that) which demonstrates that economists can indeed spot the pitfalls of their field. As an educator, when I look at economists' education reform ideas they, all too often, show manifestations of Krugman's syndrome. They confuse mathematical symmetry with truth. "

"The e-mail box runneth over with bad tidings. Teachers are reporting that cheating is rampant in New York City schools -- and they claim principals are the culprits. "

"The problems with the index go beyond the criticism that is natural for school rankings of any kind: That ranking methodology is subjective, that there is no such thing as "best" when it comes to education. (Jay, I should say, doesn't use that word to describe his rankings, but what do you think people take away from them?) "

"New York state is weighing whether to prohibit high-school teachers from grading their own students' Regents exams. The Board of Regents, which sets education policy for the state, is set to vote next week on the ban. "

"Because of its length, this entry will come in two parts. I'll post part two in a week or so. This essay originally appeared in Dissent,, Spring, 2011. If you share or repost it, please acknowledge the magazine."

"You don' t need to be a policy analyst to know that huge changes in education are happening at the state- and local-levels right now - teacher performance pay, the restriction of teachers' collective bargaining rights, the incorporation of heavily-weighted growth model estimates in teacher evaluations, the elimination of tenure, etc. Like many, I am concerned about the possible consequences of some of these new policies (particularly about their details), as well as about the apparent lack of serious efforts to monitor them."

"Gov. Rick Scott seems determined to ruin public education in Florida. Not only is he devastating school budgets with multiple-billion-dollar cuts, but he is intent on crushing the morale of the state's teachers. One can't expect to improve the public schools while demeaning the professionals who work in them."

Letters to the Editor

In prominent Hollywood movies and even in some research studies, New York City (NYC) charter schools have been held up as unusually successful. This research brief presents a new study that analyzes the resources available to those charter schools, and it also looks at their performance on state standardized tests

Thousands of people will be converging on Washington, DC this week to speak out in support of our schools at the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action.

There's been a hot debate raging over in the higher education world about plagiarism, and who really suffers from efforts to stamp it out.

As New York City, where I live and teach, works to shut down more and more schools, I just discovered a truly bizarre use of this kind of 'value-added' process which factors highly into the annual school report card grade which, in turn, factors highly into the decision to shut down schools.

In a series of posts inspired by one of Jeff Henig's recent guest posts for Rick Hess Straight Up, I'd like to explore the concept of data-driven instruction over the next few days, why it's become so suddenly all the rage in low-achieving schools, and its promises and pitfalls. I intend on doing this especially by relating my experiences with data-driven instruction, exploring the culture and systems that bore it, and soliciting feedback from other educators who have similar and divergent perspectives.

While the U.S. Department of Education warns that a majority of schools are falling behind in meeting the student-progress targets required under the No Child Left Behind Act, a new analysis suggests that students who participate in the law's largest education program, the Title I program for disadvantaged students, are making strides in mathematics and reading.

All of Duncan's Race-To-The-Top stimulus money handouts, his speaking tours with Newt Gingrich, his embrace of T-Party govs like Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels, none of that could buy him the credibility with Congress he needed for re-authorization of No Child Left Behind.