Category Archives: Uncategorized

William Mathis, a member of the Vermont Board of Education and managing director of the National Education Policy Center, reviews reactions to the dismal scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

The people who inflicted high-stakes testing insist that more and more and more testing is needed. More of the same policies that have already failed will surely work if we keep doing the same things for another generation or two.

The main perpetrator of the claim that we must “stay the (failing) course” is Arne Duncan, of course.

Mathis writes:

The latest round of flagellation of dead horse flesh has been provoked by the release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores. After 20 years of overall progress, many of the scores went down. While all groups improved over the long haul, the gaps between white and other racial groups varied over time but generally remained…

Arthur Camins retired after a career as a teacher, aprofessor, a scientist, and director of a lab in charge of innovation.

In this post, he lays out the great mission of our era: take back our government, restore our democracy of the people. Start with public schools.

An excerpt:

Public schools are the bedrocks of democracy and equity. They are a great place to start reclaiming government because they are under assault by market enthusiasts who promote charter schools.

At best, charter schools–publicly funded but privately governed–benefit a few at the expense of the many. The evidence is in. At worst, they drain funds from public school districts, exacerbate segregation, facilitate corruption, and promote competition rather than solidarity among diverse constituencies for education quality and equity. It is time to hammer the nails in the charter school coffin.

In a dramatic and welcome shift for presidential candidates,

I attended the official roll-out of the results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) a couple of days ago at the National Press Club here in DC on 14th Street NW, and listened to the current education secretary, Betsy Devos, slam public schools and their administrators as having accomplished nothing while spending tons of money. She and other speakers held up DC, Mississippi, and Florida as examples to follow. Devos basically advocated abandoning public schools altogether, in favor of giving each parent a “backpack full of cash” to do whatever they want with.

Some other education activists I know here in DC shared their thoughts with me, and I decided to look at the results for DC’s white, black, and Hispanic students over time as reported on the NAEP’s official site. (You can find them here, but be prepared to do quite a bit of work…

Journalist Valerie Strauss interviewed historian Jack Schneider. Is Betsy DeVos right to say that American public schools have not changed for a century, she asks. He answers: Not true. Betsy DeVos doesn’t know what she is talking about.

Schneider says:

If we could transport ourselves to a typical school of the early 20th century, the basic structural elements — desks, chalkboards, textbooks, etc. — would be recognizable. And we might see some similar kinds of power dynamics between adults and children. But almost everything else would be different. The subjects that students studied, the way the day was organized, the size of classes, the kinds of supports young people received — these essential aspects of education were all different. Teachers were largely untrained. Access to education was entirely shaped by demographic factors like race and income; special education didn’t exist. Latin was still king. It was just a completely different…

Valerie Strauss writes here about an important new book about the Koch Empire and its desire to eliminate and privatize public schools. The book is “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” by Christopher Leonard.

Strauss writes:

Jeff Bryant writes here about the billionaires who corrupted the school leadership pipeline. Chief among them, of course, is billionaire Eli Broad, who created an unaccredited training program as a fast track for urban superintendents.

Bryant has collected stories about how superintendents who passed through the Broad program hire other graduates of the program and do business with others who are part of their network. The ethical breaches are numerous. The self-dealing and the stench of corruption is powerful.

Bryant begins with the story of a phone call from Eli Broad to one of his graduates:

It’s rare when goings-on in Kansas City schools make national headlines, but in 2011 the New York Times reported on the sudden departure of the district’s superintendent John Covington, who resigned unexpectedly with only a 30-day notice. Covington, who had promised to “transform” the long-troubled district, “looked like a silver bullet” for all the…

This is an important, can’t-miss podcast about the malign plans of one of the richest men in the world.

Last June, blogger Michael Kohlhaas received a huge trove of documents from the Green Dot Charter Chain in response to his request filed under the state’s Public Record Act. He has been reviewing these documents and releasing them.

In this post, he summarizes a Powerpoint presentation (and provides a link to the actual document) in which the California Charter Schools Association lays out its goals.

He headlines the post:

A SECRET POWERPOINT FROM THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION REVEALS 2019 LOBBYING PRIORITIES AND STRATEGIES — IN PARTICULAR THEY CONSIDER POSITIONING THEMSELVES AS CHAMPIONS OF EQUITY AND EQUALITY BUT WORRY THAT THEIR SUPPORTERS MIGHT SEE THAT AS “MISSION CREEP” — THEY CONSIDER SUPPORTING EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH QUALITY SCHOOLS BUT WORRY THAT SUCH A POSITION MIGHT ALIENATE THE “CHOICE WING” OF THEIR BASE — THEY LIST AMONG THE GREATEST THREATS THE BARE POSSIBILITY THAT CHARTER SCHOOLS MIGHT BE REQUIRED TO EARTHQUAKE…

Bob Shepherd, polymath, wrote this: