Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Network for Public Education supports opting out of Common Core tests.

“The Network for Public Education stands in full support of parents, students and educators who choose to teach and learn about the reality of high stakes tests, opt out of high stakes tests, speak out against high stakes tests and who refuse to give those tests to students.

“Right now, in communities from the highest need to the most affluent, students, parents and educators are being punished for the courageous act of informing others about available options to opt out of high stakes tests and acting upon those options. These reprisals, often for merely learning and teaching about students’ rights, violate basic human rights and common decency.

“There is no evidence that these tests contribute to the quality of education, or help close the “achievement gap.” Since NCLB, these tests have hindered, not helped, school improvement efforts. The…

Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio helped to create an excellent website that allows anyone to review and compare data about charter schools and public schools in Ohio. All the data comes from public sources. Know Your Charter is a product of Innovation Ohio and the. Ohio Education Association.

“When we started http://www.KnowYourCharter.com, some criticized us for only posting district and charter school data. They said the only “fair” comparison (even though it is districts that lose money from the charter school funding system, not schools) was to look at building-to-building data. We chose to look at district-level data first because it is districts, not individual schools in them, that lose money to charters.

“Well, today we posted the building data as well. So now it is possible to compare every Ohio school building — district or charter — with each other, as well as districts. This adds to the comparative…

The following post was written by a parent in Tennessee. The state’s Achievement School District was created by former Commissioner Krvin Huffman with the intent of taking control of the state’s lowest-performing public schools and handing them over to charter operators. The goal, promised ASD leader Chris Barbic was that the lowest 5% would be in the top 25% within five years. The clock is ticking.

The parent writes:

Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD) Superintendent Chris Barbic, like other reformers, often talks about creating opportunities for students “trapped in failing schools.” But this week Barbic is pushing legislation that would allow Barbic to recruit students from high-performing schools INTO schools the state has identified as “failing.” Barbic told Tennessee legislators on Wednesday that parents are beating down his door to get into ASD charter schools that are some of the worst performing schools in the state, according to the state’s…

Louisiana parents are choosing to opt their children out of whatever it is that state superintendent John White has concocted and is labeling the “PARCC” test.

Louisiana is not a legitimate PARCC participant. Official PARCC vendor, Pearson, has no contract directly with the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) for the 2015 PARCC testing that is supposed to occur in March and May 2015.

2015 PARCC scores cannot directly affect student promotion decisions because the scores will not even be available until fall 2015, after the 2015-16 school year begins.

It seems that the primary function of 2015 Louisiana “PARCC” is to grade schools. The secondary use is to form a baseline to use to grade teachers via value-added modeling (VAM).

The fact that 2015 Louisiana “PARCC” will directly affect schools and not individual students has created an atmosphere in which some Louisiana school administrators are trying to coerce students…

David Sirota puts the pieces together in this investigative report about Governor Andrew Cuomo’s outside income.

“New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo likes to portray himself as a crusader against corruption in Albany, the state’s capital, taking a hardline position against allowing state lawmakers to collect outside income that may be connected to pending legislation. He has championed a bill that would require lawmakers to disclose more of their outside income lest they write bills that benefit special interests in pursuit of private cash….

“But the Democratic governor’s strong words don’t quite square with his own personal appetite for cash earned outside the confines of his state work. Cuomo has so far raked in more than $188,000 from HarperCollins, a News Corporation subsidiary. That is part of a book deal that could ultimately net him more than $700,000. With Albany’s transactional politics now the subject of a federal probe, the context…

PARCC testing in New Jersey is scheduled to begin March 2, 2015. The NJ PARCC testing “window” will not end in March, but will continue into April, May, and June, depending upon the grade level and whether the test is part of the PBA (performance-based assessment), which is given 75% of the way through a school year, or EOY (end of year), which comes 90% of the way into a school year.

For third grade, New Jersey schools must schedule 4.75 hours for the English language arts (ELA) PBA and EOY PARCC and 5 hours for the math PBA and EOY PARCC.

Just shy of 10 hours of schedules testing time for a third grader.

For fourth and fifth graders it is a full 10 hours.

For sixth through eighth graders, almost 11 hours.

Note that the PBA and EOY PARCC tests are summative assessments. The US Department of…

This week Metro Nashville School Board Member Jill Speering wrote a Facebook post that started with the following question:

At last week’s meeting, an MNPS Board member suggested that there are 35,00o seats in Metro Schools that lack “quality” so I’ve been thinking about this language and what this term means. What do we mean by student “success”? What do we mean by “quality” seats?

It’s a question that I wrestle with on a regular basis. As I’ve previously mentioned, I have two small children. My daughter, Avery, is 5 and half, (that half is extremely important to her), and a four-year-old named Peter . Six years ago when my wife was pregnant, we had many conversations about how we wanted to raise our children. We both agreed that we wanted independent, intellectually curious, verbal children who would be equipped to stand up for themselves and navigate the uncertainty that is life. Well, guess…

On behalf of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Kevin Welner and William Mathis have written an excellent overview of the failure of standardized testing as the driver of educational reform.

Here is the summary:

“In this Policy Memo, Kevin Welner and William Mathis discuss the broad research consensus that standardized tests are ineffective and even counterproductive when used to drive educational reform. Yet the debates in Washington over the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act largely ignore the harm and misdirection of these test-focused reforms. As a result, the proposals now on the table simply gild a demonstrably ineffective strategy, while crowding out policies with proven effectiveness. Deep-rooted trends of ever-increasing social and educational needs, as well as fewer or stagnant resources, will inevitably lead to larger opportunity gaps and achievement gaps. Testing will document this, but it will do nothing to change…

No Profit Left Behind, Stephanie Simon’s blockbuster POLITICO investigation of the publishing giant, Pearson, is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how things work in American education these days.  Simon warns, “Pearson’s dominance does not always serve U.S. students or taxpayers well.”

This is a major investigation: “POLITICO examined hundreds of pages of contracts, business plans and email exchanges, as well as tax filings, lobbying reports and marketing materials, in the first comprehensive look at Pearson’s business practices in the United States.  The investigation found that public officials often commit to buying from Pearson because it’s familiar, even when there’s little proof its products and services are effective.”

From North Carolina’s bid-free purchase of a student data system that failed so catastrophically that North Carolina “had to pay Pearson millions extra to fix it,” to the Los Angeles iPad disaster that brought down school superintendent John…