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The story in Atlanta is about race, gender, poverty, social class, and, of course, power. It's about fairness and integrity, about leadership and about failures of leadership, and it's also about social responsibility and the abdication of that responsibility.

Sometimes it seemed like a slick oilman or salesman was hovering around the room. Yes, he is personable, but personality does not resolve issues affecting the masses and the middle class if a genuine intent to do the right thing is absent.

...officials revealed this week that the State Education Department had quietly been conducting erasure analysis on some high school Regents exams for more than three years, a process that red-flagged 64 incidences of possible problems, including one that led to the ouster of an assistant principal in the Bronx.

The wish we all have. To find a crystal ball. To see if what we're doing now will pay off tomorrow. Where we go to college. Whom we marry. Where we buy a house. How we raise our kids. We think about it in the big picture, too. In our economy. Our politics. So it is with our public schools. They always seem like a playground for experimentation. Some proved to be bad ideas, like open-classroom school buildings. Most have been replaced. Or the brilliant idea when I was in high school. English and history taught as electives. Let the students choose what interests them. I'm still paying the price for that scattershot experience. And the "new math" roller coaster. We all paid the price for that one. But, they were bumps in the road compared to what is playing out now. The experimentation is on such a grand scale and so many are convinced it is the "right and only" way to go, there may be no path to recovery if it all turns out to be misguided. I've been glimpsing a crystal ball. And what I see in it frightens me.

Before relocating to Austin, I had spent eight years teaching math and/or science in Egypt, Mexico and Honduras at elite private schools that used American textbooks, American curriculum and were accredited by American institutions.  The majority of my students were not Americans, but graduated with a combination of diplomas: local, American and/or IB (International Baccalaureate). After graduation, nearly all attended college, mostly in the US, Canada and England, and a few remained in their own country for higher education. I proudly returned to the US, toting my international bag of creative, engaging teaching tricks, especially curriculum-based projects that I had created, ready to dazzle my American students. So, imagine my utter shock when resettling into American life, teaching at an Austin public high school, and discovering that the standards were actually lower. Moreover, my teaching creativity was all but stifled for the sake of "standardization" in the most controlling environment I had ever taught.

Last Friday, as I brushed my teeth, shaved, showered, and dressed, I listened to the panel on MSNBC's Morning Joe program tell me how worthless I am. We are approaching the end of the second year of NBC's Education Nation reports and last week I listened to the virtues of charter schools being extolled, the faults of traditional public schools being magnified, and the efforts that thousands of teachers make every day to connect with children being tossed aside like yesterday's garbage.

As recently as 25 years ago, Finnish students were below the international average in mathematics and science. There also were large learning differences between schools, with urban or affluent students typically outperforming their rural or low-income peers. Today, as the most recent PISA study proves, Finland is one of the few nations that have accomplished both a high quality of learning and equity in learning at the same time. The best school systems are the most equitable - students do well regardless of their socio-economic background. Finally, Finland should interest US educators because Finns have employed very distinct ideas and policies in reforming education, many the exact opposite of what's being tried in the United States.

It has been a difficult year for public education.  A fiveyears' overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and  Secondary Education Act, whose 2002 version we call  No Child Left Behind (NCLB), languishes in a divided  Congress.  Now Secretary of Education Arne Duncan says  he will grant states unilateral waivers from the law's most  punitive consequences, but the catch is that to qualify,  states must present accountability plans based on Duncan's  own favorite punishments for schools unable quickly  to raise scores-including sanctions like merit pay and  reduction of due process for teachers, school closure, and  rapid charterization.  The rhetoric of  school reform has little to do with the  lives of children or the daily work of  teachers.  Meanwhile a deplorable wave  of scapegoating school teachers continues  unabated.  

It's long been said that public education must achieve both public and private aims. The public, which foots the bill, has an interest in a well-educated populace. Parents-schools' primary clients-want a strong foundation for their own children. Much of the time these two interests are in perfect alignment. But what happens when they're not?

The state's Board of Regents is expected on Monday to approve recommendations drafted by a State Department of Education panel to forestall the kind of cheating scandals that erupted in Atlanta and Philadelphia this summer. Here, six experts weigh in on the problem and the panel's proposals, and offer solutions of their own.

There are dangerous education deform templates in America that run the risk of establishing a horrific precedent for others all over the world.

Amazing that, in the midst of getting ready for school, I had enough time to get in an important policy panel today. Before it started, there was already lots of controversy, primarily with the preliminary list lacking teachers of any variety. Eventually, rumor had it that education professor Diane Ravitch declined her invitation to the panel because of the lack of teacher voice. After including Leo Casey and Stephen Lazar, there was further discussion about Educators for Excellence's Sydney Morris' presence, drawing attention to what many of us feel is a right-of-center lean for Gotham Schools. Others saw the panel as a way for City Hall News to put themselves at the center of the debate for NYC education. As for me, I came in hoping not to say a word, as I've probably said far too much this summer and didn't get to listen enough.

State assessments are increasingly used as outcome measures for education evaluations and pretest scores are generally used as control variables in these evaluations. The correlation between the pretest and outcome (posttest) measures is a factor in determining, among other things, the statistical power of a study. This report examines the variability in pretest-posttest correlation coefficients for state assessment data on samples of low-performing, average-performing, and proficient students to determine how sample characteristics (e.g., achievement level) affect pretest-posttest correlation coefficients. As an application, this report illustrates how statistical power is affected by variations in pretest-posttest correlation coefficients across groups with different sample characteristics. Achievement data from four states and two large districts are examined. The results confirm that pretest-posttest correlation coefficients are smaller for samples of low performers than for samples representing the full range of performers, thus, resulting in lower statistical power for impact studies than would be the case if the study sample included a more representative group of students.

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.

The public schools are being punished for the achievement gap, which they did not create and cannot close. Mr. Gibboney urges educators to rise up and fight to protect public education and democracy, which will both collapse if our society refuses to take the steps necessary to eliminate poverty.

One week after the state Board of Education approved final rules on how parents can use a landmark new law to demand sweeping changes at their low-performing schools, parents say the hardest work lies ahead. They must organize themselves, one by one, to push for changes on their children's campuses.

I entered the fight against the 'reformers' back in February after hearing Duncan claim that a school in Chicago got dramatic results by shutting down and replacing with a charter school in the same building with the same kids, but with different adults. It was important for Duncan to have at least one 'miracle school' to prove that his style of reform was reaping results. Knowing this couldn't possibly be true, I investigated and found him to be using statistics in a very misleading way. This spurred my contacting the 'leader' of the other side (are they 'anti-reformers' or just 'pro-research'?), Diane Ravitch who then featured my investigation in a New York Times OpEd which generated a lot of attention.