The data forecast that the nation's number of public school students from prekindergarten through high school will grow by 7 percent between 2011 and 2022. Leading the charge are states in the Western and Southern parts of the United States.

What happens when people feel they aren't being listened to? They raise their voices louder.  For some time now, teachers, parents, and students have spoken out against the extraordinary emphasis on standardized testing that has become the bedrock of the nation's education policies. Critics have questioned the whole idea that teaching and learning is a pursuit that can be expressed and judged by numbers and rankings, which seems to be a forgone conclusion to policy makers and economists.

These changes were enacted in shock and awe fashion, often with little or no public discussion and sometimes in the early morning hours, and their scope and boldness would be noteworthy anywhere. But they are particularly striking given North Carolina's longstanding reputation as a "progressive" Southern state. In a matter of months, Republican lawmakers managed to reverse decades of progressive educational policies crafted by politicians of both parties. The sweeping nature of the changes in education and other areas has drawn national attention and made the state the butt of jokes by Jon Stewart and other late-night comedians.  

Myth #1 International Tests  from 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools, by Berliner and Glass  (Quote form page 16.)

And for the record, in the 2011 TIMSS results, the average U.S. score in mathematics, in both 4th and 8th grade, for the many millions of children in school where family poverty rates were less than 50% was higher than the mean scores of Finnish children in those grades.  Furthermore, the state of Massachusetts participated in this TIMSS study as a separate entity from the United States as a whole.  Massachusetts is ranked relatively high in unionization and in preschool attendance, has a relatively low unemployment rate, and has almost universal health care. In short, it is a progressive state with social policies and practices closer to Finland. So how did Massachusetts do? It scored so high that only a few Asian countries beat it, and the mean 8th-grade scores in math and science for African American children in Massachusetts were higher than the mean scores of high-scoring Finland. Page 16.  More information. Co-author, Gene Glass published a blog about the 50 Myths. Click here to sign up.

Charter schools and the risk of increased segregation  by Iris Rotberg in the Kappan PDK

The research demonstrates how the proliferation of charter schools risks increasing current levels of segregation based on race, ethnicity, and income. It also shows the potential for increasing the segregation of special education and language-minority students, and for contributing to levels of religious and cultural stratification not typically found in U.S. public education.  

A Case Study in Cherry-Plucked Research  Review of Pluck & Tenacity  in NCPE Blog  

Pluck & Tenacity was written by Ellen Belcher, an Ohio journalist, and published by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. The report's examination of the impact of vouchers on five private schools in the Buckeye State is grounded in a questionable assumption that, thanks to vouchers, "school outcomes will improve."  "As presented in this report, this assumption about the beneficial impacts of vouchers is a case-study in how to engage in slanted selection and interpretation of research evidence," 

Rise to the Mark - a two minute video about public education featuring a number of researchers about education and teachers in the schools.

In the state where high-stakes testing began, a few hundred teachers, academics, and activists came together last weekend to hasten what one leader called an "Education Spring." The Network for Public Education gathered in Austin to plan the resistance to the status quo of high-stakes testing and an encroaching corporate privatization movement. This first-of-its-kind convention might finally provide an effective opposition to the corporate reform movement that wants to run education like a business.  

Sisyphus was a king whose sins were punished by being made to push an immense rock to the top of a hill every day only to have the rock roll back down each night. Philosophers and poets for centuries have given various interpretations to the Sisyphus myth, some making him out to be a fool, some a hero.  Bernfeld likened the task of the teacher to the labors of Sisyphus: arduous work over long periods of time against huge odds, both psychological and environmental. Of course, the modern myth is that Teacher is Zeus - all powerful, able to accomplish any goal, hence if the Teacher fails, the Teacher is entirely to blame; and in the end, there are severe limits to what any teacher can accomplish.

7 Most Absurd Things America's Kids Are Learning Thanks to the Conservative Gutting of Public Education  By Katie Halper in Alternate-Education.

According to its major proponents, like the late Milton Friedman, "school choice gives parents the freedom to choose their children's education, while encouraging healthy competition among schools to better serve families' needs." Sounds lovely! But, it turns out, there are plenty of well-documented problems with school choice, especially when it comes to the school voucher system, which provides families with public funds to send their children to private -- often religious -- schools. 

Implementation is a challenging phase of education reform. In many locales, the rush is on to quickly implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). In some districts, textbooks and curriculum materials were delivered only days before school began. Many offered only minimal professional development to help teachers understand what kind of student learning the new standards aim for, and to develop new forms of instruction to support that learning.

Education policy in both the Bush and Obama administrations has suffered from failure to acknowledge a critical principle of performance evaluation in all fields, public and private-if an institution has multiple goals but is held accountable only for some, its agents, acting rationally, will increase attention paid to goals for which they are evaluated, and diminish attention to those, perhaps equally important, for which they are not evaluated.   

Americans have never been crazy about standardized tests. Students grouse about taking them. Educators grumble about giving them. And everyone complains when the scores aren't up to snuff.  Yet though they may object to the frequency of assessment, or to undesirable outcomes, Americans have an abiding faith in tests as accurate and objective measures of student achievement. 

  Click here to view the League's Flipboard magazine.  The "Cornerstone" is a collection of research and editorials about public education.