The Two Faces of American Education   by Andrew Delbanco in the New York Times Book Review.
Today, when the state of teaching and learning is bemoaned, it is usually the public schools that get the blame. Politicians and pundits hold them accountable for how students perform on standardized tests. Principals are fired and schools closed for poor results. Teachers feel besieged.


AFT project offers tools to understand international comparisons  by Tom Lansworth

in AFT News
"That means that Americans should not only look at where our students rank against the kids in other mostly highly developed nations, but they also should consider how the day-to-day lives of those students vary from one country to another," Keefer says. "For example, among PISA's highest-performing school systems, U.S. students have one of the highest poverty rates-a factor that has a significant impact on academic performance."

Arne Duncan Goes After "Armchair Pundits"  by Anthony Cody Education Week Teacher.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in an interview in 2011, where he said: "Diane Ravitch is in denial and she is insulting all of the hardworking teachers, principals and students all across the country who are proving her wrong every day,"

Yesterday he expanded a bit on this sentiment. Though he did not mention Ravitch by name, he seemed to have her in mind when labeling his critics "armchair pundits" who are "so supremely confident in their perspective that they have simply stopped listening to people with a different viewpoint."

 

by Patrick Welsh, The Washington  

"It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won't know for probably a decade."

"In the early years of this century, Bill Gates felt certain that he knew how to fix the nation's high schools. He pumped $2 billion into breaking them into smaller schools, often Nader the same roof.

In 2008, he decided he was not pleased with the results,and he dropped that idea.

Then, he decided that teacher evaluation was broken, and he would use his billions-plus the billions of Race to the Top-to create a metric that would identify the best and worst teachers."

"Earlier this year, spontaneous rebellions against top-down mandates and budget cuts inflicted on public schools erupted around the nation.

In a months-long Education Spring, students, parents, teachers and community activists staged boisterous rallies, street demonstrations, school walkouts, test boycotts, and other actions to protest government austerity and top-down "accountability" mandates that damage community schools and diminish students' opportunities to learn."

 The charter school mistake   By Diane Ravitch in the Los Angeles Times     

"Reforming' schools by giving tax money to corporations is a distraction from the system's real problems - poverty and racial segregation.

Billionaires like privately managed schools. Parents are lured with glittering promises of getting their kids a sure ticket to college. Politicians want to appear to be champions of "school reform" with charters. But charters will not end the poverty at the root of low academic performance or transform our nation's schools into a high-performing system."     

Why VAM Is a Sham  by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley  in  the Diane Ravitch Blog 

"While "Top Ten Lists" have become a recurrent trend in periodicals, magazines, blogs, and the like, one "Top Ten List," presented here, should satisfy readers' of this blog and hopefully other educators' needs for VAMmunition, or rather, ammunition practitioners need to protect themselves against the unfair implementation and use of VAMs (i.e., value-added models)."   

State Chiefs Set Criteria for 'High-Quality' Assessment  By Catherine Gewertz   in EDWeek.

"State schools superintendents have banded together to demand that testmakers-and the two consortia building tests for the common standards-adhere to four principles to create "high-quality assessment.

In a document issued today, the Council of Chief State School Officers lays out its view of what good tests must include. It describes how assessment practice should ensure test accessibility and security, and create user-friendly reports that chart students' progress and provide data that can help guide instruction."

 Cyber Schools Fleece Taxpayers for Phantom Students and Failing Grades

By Mary Bottari, PRWatch | News Analysis TruthOut 

"The data is in and K12 Inc.'s brand of full-time public "cyber school" is garbage. Not surprising for an educational model kicked off with a $10 million investment from junk-bond king Michael Milken.?"

Gates Money and Common Core -- Part V   by Mercedes Schneider, in Huffington Post Politics.  

This post is the fifth in a series on Bill Gates' funding of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). As of September 22, 2013, Gates has spent $173.5 million expressly for CCSSaccording to the Gates grants search engine.
The first post includes CCSS background and Gates funding...

In my second installment, Gates CCSS funding of organizations that influence state departments of education and school districts.

The third involves Gates CCSS funding to state departments of education and school districts.

The fourth post documents Gates CCSS funding to universities. In this fifth post, I examine Gates CCSS funding to foundations and institutes."