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The Network for Public Education has now held three national conferences. The first was in Austin, Texas; the second in Chicago; and the 2016 conference just concluded in Raleigh, North Carolina.

About 500 activists, mostly teachers, but also principals, administrators, school board members, parents, and even representatives of the Newark Student Union were there. Most of the best-known education bloggers were there. I haven’t done a count but we had representation from nearly every state, including people who flew in from California, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nebraska.

Every one of these conferences has been exciting. It is exciting to meet the people you know online but have never met face to face. It is exciting to be surrounded with people who share your beliefs and values. It is exciting to know that you are not alone. There was a sense of collegiality and camaraderie that occasionally felt like…

At its third annual conference, held in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Network for Public Education released a major report on the problems of current test-based teacher evaluation systems. The report includes recommendations for innovative reform.

For Immediate Release: April 17, 2016

Media Contact:

Anthony Cody 510-917-9231, Anthony_cody@hotmail.com

Carol Burris 718-577-3276 cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

National Report Shows New Teacher Evaluation Systems Causing Harm

“Teachers Talk Back: Educators on the Impact of Teacher Evaluation” is a ground-breaking report that brings forth the voices of those on the front lines, teachers and administrators, to reveal the impact that changes to teacher evaluations are having on our schools, teachers and students.

The Network for Public Education Urges Policymakers and the Public to Remove Evaluations Based on Test Scores and Strengthen Teacher Collaboration.

Raleigh, NC — Today, the Network for Public Education, a national nonprofit education advocacy organization, released Teachers Talk Back: Educators on the Impact of…

Prepare yourself, Pittsburgh.

A new Political Action Committee (PAC) has descended on the ‘Burgh to further privatize our public schools and wrest control away from parents who are in favor of school reforms that actually work.

It’s called Campaign for Quality Schools, but make no mistake. The wealthy special interests behind it don’t care about quality schools – they care about quality profits for their investors.

PACs are political committees organized for the purpose of raising and spending money to elect and defeat candidates. Unlike federal PACS which can only give up to $5,000 to a candidate per election, state PACs in Pennsylvania have no spending limits. In that way, they are like federal Super PACs which also have no limits on donation size.

Besides giving an unfair advantage to special interest groups, PACS also have notoriously been used for nefarious ends. For instance, former Republican U.S. Rep. John…

Laura Chapman, retired arts educator, explains the goals of standardized testing:

She writes:

“Here is another reason to opt out.

Test scores are collected and then marketed by greatschools.org. This non-profit is a sophisticated and well-funded system for gathering test scores and other information about students and parents, then selling that information. The website literally sells ads and licenses for access to test scores and other data on schools–public, private, and charter–with expansions planned for pre-school and daycare-centers.

This national data hog is funded by billionaire foundations unfriendly to public schools. The logos of the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations are prominently displayed. A list of 19 other supporters includes the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, and New Schools Venture Fund among others. All of these supporters want to make public schools an artifact from the past.

Parents, if you patronize the tests, you…

Students at the Bronx Lighthouse College Preparatory Academy wrote a letter objecting to a visit by Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and the school canceled his visit.

Cruz, no doubt, hoped to use the charter school as a photo-op for his New York campaign.

The students, however, had other ideas.

They wrote:

A group of students will be leaving during 4th period, as act of civil disobedience in regards to the arrival of Ted Cruz to BLCPA. We have all considered the consequences of our actions and are willing to accept them. We respect you and all the staff at BLCPA as well as the expected guests. But we want you to understand that as passionate students, we have ideas and principles that should be heard and respected. This walk out isn’t a reflection of our discontent with BLCPA but our opportunity to stand up for our community and future…

South Carolina remains a disturbing subset of the larger education reform movement effectively dismantling but not improving pubic schools, institutions that have historically and are currently failing vulnerable student populations who need public opportunities more than anyone.

Charleston is now the battle ground over expanding charter schools and embracing the already failed turnaround or takeover models that many early adopters in other states are ending.

The public version of the debate has included the following:

• Beware of ‘turnaround’ school districts (see compilation of research at the end)
• Beware of privatizing public education, Millicent Brown and Jon Hale
• Momentum grows for Charleston education, Anita Zucker and Ted Legasey
• Brentwood and Burns make public schools work for kids
• Don’t trust ‘free market’ reforms for public schools, The Rev. Joseph A. Darby

Beyond the specifics of the issues of this debate about takeover policies and charter school expansion (and the implications of privatizing public…

The Network for Public Education, with members in every state, has issued a call for a national opt out from standardized testing.

The tests have no diagnostic value. They are used to rank and grade students, teachers, and schools, but they provide no information to help teachers or students. They are useless.

They consume an absurd amount of time. Little children spend more time to take tests than law exams.

The tests have an absurdly high passing mark, which guarantees that the majority of students will fail.

The tests do not help children. They hurt children. We don’t know how to measure what matters most.

Join us. Opt out.

You have the right to refuse the state tests.

Here is how you do it in New York.

For information about your own state, go to the website of United Opt Out.

Do you want to know why to opt out?

Here is a short summary. The tests now in use are tied to a cut score (passing mark) that guarantees that about 70% of all students will fail. The tests will be especially harmful to students with disabilities and students who are English language learners. But the harm extends far beyond those students.

The tests do not provide any useful information. They will tell you whether your child is a 1, 2, 3, or 4. What good is that? It will tell you what percentile rank your child is. What good is that? The test will not help your child or her teacher. It will label your school as…

Our reader Dennis Ian gives his analysis of the role of Teach for America. TFA is an April Fool’s joke on American education. It claims that its inexperienced and idealistic recruits can transform lives and provide an excellent education in only two years of teaching. It claims that its five weeks of training in summer camp prepare its recruits to “perform” even better than experienced teachers. It perpetuates the myth that test scores are the most important outcome of schooling. It sneers at mentions of poverty, since those who are concerned about poverty are allegedly making “excuses.” It is a huge corporate entity with annual revenues in excess of $300 million, whose executives are paid six figure salaries, as befits executives of a major corporation. It gives the political and corporate leaders of our society the illusory belief that amateurs are better than veterans if the former went to an…