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Welcome to the April 14th edition of the HML POST

 

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U.S.News

At first glance, the curriculum standards known as Common Core look appealing. Who could be against improved critical thinking and communication skills or more progressive, student centered teaching? Who could be against collaborative thinking and reflective learning or being "college and career ready"?

   

 

 

David Berliner on PISA and Poverty  by Diane Ravitch on the Ravitch Blog.

Since there is always a lot of chatter about what international tests scores mean, I invited David Berliner to share his views. Berliner is one of our nation's pre-eminent scholars of education.  

 

 

 

Them that's got shall have Them that's not shall lose 

So the Bible says and it still is news
Mama may have and Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own, that's got his own

Who would have imagined that many decades later Republicans and Democrats alike would unwittingly channel verses from Billie Holiday's 1941 haunting song, God Bless the Child. Now, however, it is not a sorrowful lament that is popular, but instead vocal support for a divisive "be on you own" charter school policy.

 
How to Better Distribute Effective Teachers   by By Stephanie Simon on the Politico blog.

The report's authors argue that the next iteration of No Child Left Behind should reflect the shift in the states away from having a focus on "highly qualified" status for teachers, and toward teacher effectiveness.   - It identifies a number of levers in state policy to grow and better distribute effective teachers. States should have to show the federal government they use robust teacher evaluation systems, which measure teacher performance in part by student's academic growth. 

  

Why Is Public Television Against Public Schools?   by Peter Dreier on the Huffington Post

You'd think that that public television would support public education, but you'd be wrong. The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) has gotten in bed with the billionaires and conservatives who want to privatize our public schools. PBS has nary a word to say about the big money - from folks like the Walton family (Walmart), Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Eli Broad, business titan and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, Joel Klein, and their ilk - that has been funding the attack on public schools and teachers unions.  

  

Common Core loses its Biggest Cheerleader   by By Stephanie Simon

- Duncan immediately added that his stance was "not news." And his spokeswoman, Dorie Nolt, later pulled up audio from a press breakfast in January where Duncan was asked about whether the term "Common Core" was politically radioactive. "We're not interested in the term,"  

  

 

  Imagine your first day at a new school. You are surrounded by new faces and new teachers and are navigating a new building. What are you concerned about? Making new friends? Liking your new teachers?  When they enter our school each fall, our sixth-graders write about their hopes and fears for middle school. At one of the most socially difficult times of their lives, over a third of our children have more anxiety about standardized tests than any other issue.

  

Would you trust Silicon Valley to disrupt your child's education?    By John McDuling in the Quartz blog 

Venture capitalists are pouring funding into new technologies for a trillion-dollar industry in the US that could be ripe for disruption: education.

Education technology startups attracted $1.25 billion in funding in 2013, according to analysis by CB Insights, and the boom has grown in 2014, with ed tech companies attracting nearly half that amount ($559 million) during the first quarter alone.

As a new lawsuit seeks to radically transform teaching conditions, an expert warns of our nation's education shift. Final briefs are due next week in Vergara v. California, an under-the-radar billionaire-backed lawsuit that could transform teaching conditions in the largest state. Citing the constitutional rights of its public school student plaintiffs, the suit seeks to overturn state laws that schedule tenure consideration after two years of teaching, dictate the use of seniority when budget cuts force layoffs, and impose due process rules on teachers' terminations.
 

This study finds partial evidence that improvements in school-level academic performance will lead to improvements (i.e., decreases) in school-level dropout rates. Schools with improved performance saw decreased dropout rates following these successes. However, we find more evidence of a negative side of the quest for improved academic performance. When dropout rates increase, the performance composites in subsequent years increase.

  

Poverty-related Challenges Sap Instructional Time in High Schools    By Holly Yettick in Education Week.

Poverty-related challenges steal time from high school class periods, leading students at low-income schools to receive an average of half an hour less instruction per day than their higher-income peers.   The study, based on a 2013 survey of a representative of sample of 783 teachers from 193 California charter and traditional public schools.

  

 

The Remarkable But True Tale of the Birth of Common Core  by Robert Sheppard on the Ravitch Blog.

The New York legislature just voted to dump inBloom. But Diane Ravitch's first post about that subjected noted, wisely, that inBloom was dead "for Now."  Don't think for a moment that Big Data has been beaten. I am going to explain why. I hope that you will take the time and effort to follow what I am going to say below. It's a little complicated, but it's a great story. It's a birth narrative-the astonishing but, I think, undeniably true story of the birth of the Common Core.

  

 

  

To no one's surprise, the market-oriented EducationNext, "a journal of opinion and research," does not like the findings outlined in the recent book, The Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools, which I wrote with Prof. Sarah Theule Lubienski. After all, the two large, nationally representative datasets we analyzed do not lend support to that publication's agenda of school privatization. 

  

 

 The state's largest teachers' union has passed a motion to support parents and students who opt out of statewide standardized tests. The union also promotes opting out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium state test coming next school year to align with the new Common Core State Standards.  "This motion is about promoting positive learning in the classroom, as opposed to a fixation on testing," Gundle said.

  

 The Education Writers Association is pleased to announce the winners of the 2013 National Awards for Education Reporting, honoring tireless reporting, compelling storytelling, trenchant criticism and sterling analysis produced by print, radio and online media outlets across the country.
 

Sorry. No evidence to support this myth whatsoever.

Home schooling grew in popularity over the past 3 decades. Ten years ago, Michael Apple named it the fastest growing alternative to public education. At first glance, the superiority of home schooling appeared to be verified by Larry Rudner (1999) in a research study published in the journal Education Policy Analysis Archives.  The home schoolers' scores were often in the 70th and 80th percentiles, and 25% of the home schoolers tested one or more grades above grade level. This was great news for parents who want to create schools at home for their children, and for critics seeking more ammunition to attack professional teachers and the public schools. But Rudner's study does not support the myth that homeschooling is a superior form of education.

  

Education (Political) Cartoon of the Week 

 

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

All of the past issues of the HML Posts are available for view and search purposes at 
 

http://www.hmleague.org/hml-weekly-blog/

  

See these and other related articles in the "Cornerstone" Internet magazine.

 

 


Reprinted with permission.
 
 
About Us
The Horace Mann League of the USA is an honorary society that promotes the ideals of Horace Mann by advocating for public education as the cornerstone of our democracy.

 

Officers:
President: Gary Marx, President, Center for Public Outreach, Vienna, VA
President-elect: Charles Fowler, Exec. Director, Suburban School Admin. Exter, HN
Vice President: Christine  Johns-Haines, Superintendent, Utica Community Schools, MI
1st Past President: Joe Hairston, President, Vision Unlimited, Reisterstown, MD
2nd Past President: Mark Edwards, Superintendent, Mooresville Graded Schools, NC

Directors:
Laurie Barron, Supt. of Schools, Evergreen School District, Kalispell , MT
Martha Bruckner, Supt., Council Bluffs Community Schools, IA
Evelyn Blose-Holman, (ret.) Superintendent, Bay Shore Schools, NY
Carol Choye, Instructor, Bank Street College, NY
Brent Clark, Exec. Dir., Illinois Assoc. of School Admin. IL
Linda Darling Hammond, Professor of Education, Stanford U. CA
James Harvey, Exec. Dir., Superintendents Roundtable, WA
Eric King, Superintendent, (Ret.) Muncie Public Schools, IN
Steven Ladd, Superintendent, Elk Grove Unified School District, Elk Grove, CA 
Barry Lynn, Exec. Dir., Americans United, Washington, DC
Kevin Maxwell, CEO, Prince George's County Schools, Upper Marlboro, MD
Stan Olson, Director, Silverback Learning, Boise, ID
Steven Webb, Supt. of Schools, Vancouver School District, WA

 

Executive Director:
Jack McKay, Professor Emeritus, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 
560 Rainier Lane, Port Ludlow, WA 98365 (360) 821 9877
 
To become a member of the HML, click here to download an application.