Education Links

"Scientifically disproven years ago, the "Beat the Odds" myth is still the excuse of convenience for justifying claims that schools can single-handedly overcome poverty."

"...Value-added modeling pops up every- where today, from newspapers to television to political campaigns. VAM is heavily promoted with unbridled and uncritical enthusiasm by the press, by politicians, and even by (some) educational ex- perts, and it is touted as the modern, "scientific" way to measure educational success in everything from charter schools to individual teachers. Yet most of those promoting value-added modeling are ill-equipped to judge either its effectiveness or its limitations..."

"..."It's Orwellian in the sense that through this vast funding they start to control even how we tacitly think about the problems facing public education," said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who said he received no financing from the foundation..."

"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?) "

"The end of the school year and the layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers are bringing more attention to reformers' calls to remake public schools. Today's school reform movement conflates the motivations and agendas of politicians seeking reelection, religious figures looking to spread the faith and bureaucrats trying to save a dime. Despite an often earnest desire to help our nation's children, reformers have spread some fundamental misunderstandings about public education."

"I'm an advocate for charter schooling. Regular readers of RHSU know that this is not because I'm convinced they're the answer to the "achievement gap" or to driving up math and reading scores, but because chartering offers an opportunity to rethink how we go about teaching, learning, and schooling. In that context, I've long been concerned that our rethinking is almost entirely focused on reading and math scores and graduation rates and the result can yield a reflexive, frail conception of schooling. If we're going to reinvent schools, I'd like us to do so in a manner that respects the broad purpose of the schoolhouse, which means paying due attention to the arts, to a rich curriculum, and, perhaps most important of all, to helping students develop as moral individuals and citizens. "

"The Brookings Institution has now released their web based version of Passing Muster including a nifty calculation tool for rating teacher evaluation systems. Unfortunately, in my view, this rating system fails muster in at least two major ways."

""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.""

"There has recently been a lot of talk about teachers' views on education policy. Many teachers have been quite vocal in their opposition to certain policies (also here) and many more have expressed their views democratically - through their unions - especially in states where teachers have collective bargaining rights."

"For decades, principals have been recognized as important contributors to the effectiveness of schools. In an era of school accountability reform and shared decisionmaking and management in schools, leadership matters. Principals constitute the core of the leadership team in schools."

"For several years now, would-be reformers have gotten away with claiming that there's a goopy, groupthink "reform consensus." They depict the edu-debates as a simple-minded morality play between a "reform" phalanx and "adult interests." This line has been sold most assiduously by Democrat for Ed Reform-types and NCLB enthusiasts who think conservatives are supposed to quietly, cheerfully sign on to the grand schemes crafted by their betters."

"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."

"While any teacher evaluation system must include a measure of growth of student learning over time, a snapshot of a student's skills, understanding and content knowledge doesn't give a true picture of a teacher's performance. Our current state tests are not designed to measure growth from year to year, and we are years away from having valid state tests that are. "

"ATLANTA (AP) - A law that cleared the way for a wave of new state-approved charter schools was struck down Monday by the state's divided top court in a landmark decision that will affect thousands of students and promises to reshape how Georgia's public schools are funded"

"Once again, a conservative politician has perpetuated the mis-truth about the ratio of administrators to teachers and the "huge" number of non-teachers we have hired over the last decades (see http://edtechsandyk.blogspot.com/2011/05/governor-perry-is-wrong-about-texas.html). Conservative groups have consistently perpetuated these incorrect data as a way to garner public support for cutting education-especially cutting central office positions. In fact, Republican Senators and the Governor have implied that no teachers should lose their jobs as a result of budget cuts since the "huge" increase in non-teachers-especially administrators-leaves plenty of non-teaching positions available to cut in order to solve the budget deficit perpetrated on districts by bad decision-making by the Governor and legislature back in 2006."