Category Archives: Uncategorized

Let me start by suggesting something key that has not been articulated widely enough: All standardized testing is high stakes testing. If there were no stakes involved, why would corporate reformers and testing companies lobby tooth and nail to ensure standardized tests remain a central cornerstone of all education policies? At stake are billions of dollars for testing and data mining companies. The collection, ownership, and (mis)use of private student data is at stake. The future of students who are denied meaningful quality education in lieu of skill-drill and kill instruction is at stake. The use of testing data to assume the “value” of children according to race, culture, language and class is at stake.

And even if the standardized tests (in a reduced role returned to state level decision-making as Alexander and Murray seem to promise) are not used to evaluate teachers, retain students, or close schools, it is, and…

Earlier this year, the head of the Achievement School District in Tennessee, Chris Barbic, wrote a piece about the supposed belief gap. A few months later, another gap was floated by Forbes – the Honesty Gap. Supposedly, the scores our kids are getting on state tests aren’t matching up with NAEP scores, leading to a false sense of proficiency. Based on recent results from this year’s TCAP tests in Tennessee, I couldn’t tell you if that’s true or not because I’m not even sure what our scores mean (That’s not making parents and teachers very happy, but that’s another tale for another day.)

Then April rolls around and Mr. Chris “Poverty-is-no-excuse” Barbic starts talking about the different types of poverty and the challenges each brings, something we all had been telling him about for years and to which he’d just respond with his “all kids can learn” mantra. Yesterday, he did an…

On June 6, 2015, Huffington Post education editor Rebecca Klein published a piece entitled, 5 of the Most Extreme Claims Made Against Common Core in the Last 5 Years. (Interestingly, Klein chose to publish her post under the category of “politics” rather than “education.”)

She apparently does so as some means of commemorating the fifth anniversary of Common Core completion.

Sure, Klein notes that not all opponents to Common Core promote extreme stances. However, by emphasizing the extremes and dismissing moderate arguments in a couple of statements, Klein’s post promotes the idea that Common Core is really sound, and those advancing the Five Fringe Arguments highlighted in her post constitute the “some criticism” responsible for making Common Core “a polarizing issue.”

Here is the heart of her Common Core sell:

The standards, which have been adopted in a majority of states, emphasize critical thinking over rote memorization…

Doug Livingston of the Beacon-Journal writes that Ohio’s charter schools are notoriously wasteful with taxpayer dollars. And he predicts it will get worse because auditing of charters has been privatized. For some reason, private auditors are far less likely to uncover financial abuses.

“No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.

“A Beacon Journal review of 4,263 audits released last year by State Auditor Dave Yost’s office indicates charter schools misspend public money nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.

“Since 2001, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival .

“And the extent of the misspending could be far higher.

“That’s because Yost and his predecessors, unable to audit all charter…

This is one of the most powerful articles I have ever read about the pernicious lies of those who call themselves “reformers.” It should be a cover story in TIME or Newsweek or the front page of the Néw York Times. Someone should send it to Frank Bruni, Nicholas Kristof, David Brooks, the PBS Newshour, and everyone else who opines about education.

Bob Braun slams the editorial board of the Star-Ledger for their consistent, unrelenting defamation of teachers. The editorial board apparently believes that the only good teachers are inexperienced young teachers (think TFA), while any experienced teacher is a slacker who should be fired, “sooner rather than later” (using the infamous phrase quoted in the NY Times by one of the co-authors of the infamous Chetty-Rockoff-Friedman study).

Here are excerpts from Bob Braun’s fiery and brilliant :editorial:

“A recent editorial in The Star-Ledger stated the state administration of…

The corporate reformers like to say that “school choice” is the civil rights issue of our time. This is a view shared by Jeb Bush, the Walton family, Scott Walker, and various other rightwingers whose real goal is to shrink the public sector by privatization and to eliminate unions.

But a recent story in the New York Times said that the loss of public sector jobs hurts African American workers disproportionately.

“Roughly one in five black adults works for the government, teaching school, delivering mail, driving buses, processing criminal justice and managing large staffs. They are about 30 percent more likely to have a public sector job than non-Hispanic whites, and twice as likely as Hispanics.

“Compared to the private sector, the public sector has offered black and female workers better pay, job stability and more professional and managerial opportunities,” said Jennifer Laird, a sociologist at the University of Washington…

Scott Walker has a plan. It is called “reform,” but in reality it is destruction. He (acting through the legislature) is holding funding for public schools flat (he wanted to cut it); he is increasing funding for charter schools and vouchers; he is imposing draconian budget cuts on the University of Wisconsin system; and he is lowering standards for entry into teaching. One analysis says the voucher expansion proposal would drain $800 million from public schools over a 10-year period.

Tony Evers, the veteran educator who was elected twice as state superintendent of education, says Wisconsin is in a “race to the bottom.”

Wisconsin has decided to reform its teacher licensing standards—by eliminating them! Anyone with any bachlor’s degree can teach any subject, a change inserted into the state budget without hearings.

Even those without a bachelor’s degree are eligible to teach, as Valerie Strauss notes: “That’s not all. The…

On its website, the Gates Foundation makes it clear that it often initiates contact with organizations to apply for specific grants and that it does not fund what it does not consider a Gates Foundation “priority.”

The assertiveness of the Gates Foundation in funding its approved version of education reform takes on head-tilting meaning when one considers the organizations that Gates funds “for general operating support.”

That means that the Gates Foundation has decided to that it wants to keep such organizations in business. So, it gives them money to stay afloat, like Dad shelling out an allowance to the kids.

There is no greater opportunity for fiscal dependence on the Gates Foundation than for an organization to receive Gates money for general operating expenses– especially in the case of repeated operating support grants. Note also that the Gates Foundation pays its grants in installments, and it sure can become easy to get used…

Few issues in education seem more important or more universally embraced (from so-called progressive educators to right-wing politicians such as Jeb Bush) than the need to have all children reading on grade level—specifically by that magical third grade:

Five years ago, communities across the country formed a network aimed at getting more of their students reading proficiently by the end of 3rd grade. States, cities, counties, nonprofit organizations, and foundations in 168 communities, spread across 41 states and the District of Columbia, are now a part of that initiative, theCampaign for Grade-Level Reading.

However, advocating that all students must read at grade level—often defined as reading proficiency—rarely acknowledges the foundational problems with those goals: identifying text by a formula claiming “grade level” and then identifying children as readers by association with those readability formulas.

This text, some claim, is a fifth-grade text, and thus children who can “read” that…

Peter Cunningham is in charge of what blogger Anthony Cody terms, “education’s only multi-million-dollar blog,” Education Post. In an interview with another blogger, corporate-reform bee charmer Jennifer Berkshire (“EduShyster”), Cunningham divulges the privatizing-reform origins of Education Post:

When I was asked to create this organization—it wasn’t my idea; I was initially approached by Broad—it was specifically because a lot of reform leaders felt like they were being piled on and that no one would come to their defense. They said somebody just needs to help right the ship here. There was a broad feeling that the anti-reform community was very effective at piling on and that no one was organizing that on our side. There was unequivocally a call to create a community of voices that would rise to the defense of people pushing reform who felt like they were isolated and alone. 

Twelve million Arnold Foundation dollars later, we have…