Education Links

"With all the controversy and acrimonious debate surrounding the use of value-added models in teacher evaluation, few seem to be paying much attention to the implementation details in those states and districts that are already moving ahead. This is unfortunate, because most new evaluation systems that use value-added estimates are literally being designed to fail."

"To assume that the outputs, namely test scores, is the best way to measure our commitment to education is a flawed point of view."

"This was written by sophomore Jack Eiselt, who attends Myers Park High School in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina. This year the district launched a new testing regime so that students take standardized tests in every subject so that all teachers can be evaluated based in part on the test scores of their students. Students in every grade helped field-test a total of 52 new tests this spring, kindergarteners included. This piece appeared in the Charlotte Observer."

"I offer here a short list of seven things that have become obvious, from my position as a teacher. If only our education policies might be constrained by the requirement that they honor the obvious!"

"By year's end I will have entered 8,892 data points into my district's data collection systems - Gradebook and Reading 3D. This data is from homework, assessments, and report cards. Which of these 8,892 data points are the important ones? I mean, which of these data points will count towards my evaluation? And what problem are you trying to address by including student assessments into teacher evaluations? "

"Most Teach for America recruits are idealistic and dedicated. But who is behind the organization, and does its approach bolster or hinder urban education reform?"

"Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction. The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years."

"...In a recent report on Democracy Now, Juan Gonzalez turned up an obscure tax credit that was passed by Congress at the end of the Clinton administration in 2000, called a New Markets tax credit. It provides an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities. The credit has been heavily used in recent years for charter schools..."

This is the intro to links to the following articles: A Dangerous Obsession Linda Darling-Hammond Avoiding the Poverty Issue Paul Thomas Costly, But Worth It Marcus Winters Wasting More Money Molly Putnam One Factor Among Many Kevin Carey Trust Principals, Not Tests Michael Petrilli Too Much For Tests to Bear Clara Hemphill

"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. "

"Yesterday, The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce approved The Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act (H.R. 1891), which was originally introduced by Congressman Duncan Hunter (CA-52), permanently eliminates 43 K-12 education programs including Reading Is Fundamental (RIF). Chairman Hunter describes all of these programs as "wasteful" and "ineffective"."

"We have a heritage of disrespect for the poor. Either they don't know what they're doing or they deserve what they get. (While we insist on bragging about our rags-to-riches family histories to prove the latter.)"

"Through storytelling and sobering statistics, American Teacher explores the mismatch between the value of effective teachers and the United States's history of disinvestment in teacher salary, support, and status."

""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. "

"Lost in the exaggerated claims of "bad" teachers being at the core of all that ails education and the concurrent calls for greater teacher accountability, often linked to student test scores, is a careful consideration of why we have universal public education in a free society and what the role of the teacher is within that purpose."

"In a memo sent this week, a state official ruled that the city and the teachers union had to reach a deal on evaluations before the city could move ahead with plans to bring in nonprofits to help improve the schools."

"Nearly a decade of America's test-based accountability systems, from "adequate yearly progress" to high school exit exams, has shown little to no positive effect overall on learning and insufficient safeguards against gaming the system, a blue-ribbon committee of the National Academies of Science concludes in a new report."

"The United States' education system is neither coherent nor likely to see great improvements based on its current attempts at reform, a report released this week by the National Center on Education and the Economy concludes. "

"Although Teach For America began twenty years ago as a well-intentioned band-aid, it has morphed into what is essentially a jobs program for the privileged, funded by taxpayers and wealthy individuals."

"Carts of laptops haven't raised student achievement-and neither will carts of iPads."