• Value-added in Sunday LA Times vs REAL value added via labour
• Detroit enlists teacher corps in classrooms
• How Obama got it right on school reform
• The Common Core Curriculum Mapping Project: Bill Gates’ Victory, Part 2
• The Common Core Curriculum Mapping Project: Bill Gates’ Victory, part 1
• Checkbook Reform Creates Tough Choices for Teachers
• Who’s teaching L.A.’s kids?
• Teachers share concerns with teaching to standardized tests
• What’s the Real Result When Fights in Hallways Are Declared Criminal Behavior
• Clean Out Your Desk Is firing (a lot of) teachers the only way to improve public schools?
• What a Collapsing Empire Looks Like
• The Descartes Variation
• Camden Closing Library System
• US Department of Education Announces 2010 Highest-Rated i3 Applicants
• 2011 Justice & Witness Ministries Message on Public Education
• Obama’s promises and educational masquerade
• NCTE Speaks Out on the LEARN Act
• Is the Gates Foundation involved in bribery?
• NewSchools Summit 2010 – Speakers
• David Obey Locks Horns with Obama in Budget Battle
• D.C. and Massachusetts to vote on national school standards
• Bias seen in push to new ed standards
• A Popular Principal, Wounded by Government’s Good Intentions
• Bill Gates at the AFT Convention 1984
• Bill Gates’ School Crusade
• NEWS ANALYSIS… The NEA Representative Assembly Proves the Education Agenda is a War Agenda
• The most dangerous man in America
• Teacher: Worst year in the classroom in decades
• In Need of a Renaissance
• Charges Against David Pakter Dismissed
• A Chicago Teacher’s Action Inspires Antitest Crusaders
• The New York Times in Chicago: Under the Influence?
• Teacher-Evaluation Bill Approved in Colorado
• Say what, Secretary Duncan?
• Parents Across America Oppose the Administration’s Blueprint for Education Reform
• True Urban Legends: What’s That Smell?
• Layoff Notices Sent to Thousands of US Teachers
• The Cartel
• NEA Tips on Prepping for Testing
• The Charge of the Obama/Duncan Plan
• Mass Closures of Public Schools, Promotion of Charters Raise Fears of Privatized Detroit Education System
• Urgent Call to Florida Teachers
• ASCD Announces Sponsor of Whole Child Initiative
• Obama Backs Rewarding Districts That Police Failing Schools
• Wave of Creative Destruction Swamping U.S. Schools
• Wordsworth Makes the Common Core Standards Exemplary Text for 9th Graders
• Broad Foundation Awards $1.5 Million to National Center on Time & Learning to Double Partnerships with Districts, States Expanding School Calendars
• March 4: Where Will YOU Be?
• Revisionaries How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbook
• Poor Elijah’s 2010 Education Wish List
• I teach kindergarten and I hate what I am doing in my classroom
• New Books for Kindergarten Students
• Finding a Job in the 21st Century Global Economy
• Parent Permission Slip for the 21st Century
• Don’t Drink the Tea
• PTA Makes Big Push for the Common Core Standards
• New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons
• National Call for March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education
• News delayed is news denied…. The Skeleton in Arne Duncan’s Closet
• Data Sightings
• Race to the Top in Education
• From Obama, a new focus on math and science education — and a new plum for prize-winners
• The National Council of Teachers of English should award the Doublespeak Award to itself.
• Schools in the Dark About Tainted Lunches
• COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS INITIATIVE K-12 STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT TEAMS
• Pfizer deserts its monument to corporate welfare
• Surprise, Surprise: Someone is Lying
• It’s the Poverty, Stupid, Not Pre-K Skills
• Bookless Libraries
• CREW ASKS FOR INVESTIGATION INTO WHY WALL STREET IS GETTING H1N1 VACCINE AHEAD OF THOSE WHO MOST NEED IT
• So, You Get a Phone Call
• Teach Your Teachers Well
• Call to Action: March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education
• The Renovation and Heartbreaking Dismantling of the John Ericsson Middle School 126 Library to make way for a Charter School Teacher Lounge
• The Future of Teaching in America: Teachers as Human Capital
• No Room for Volunteers
• Community Leaders Excluded from Duncan and Holder Meeting
• Who created the conditions for the murder of Derrion Albert?
• Under ‘accountability’: Blame the bricks
• Why Won’t NCTE Publish Info About Member Activities?
• Rhee’s 200-Page ‘Framework’ Spells Out Teaching Guidelines
• From Compliance to Innovation: Remarks of Arne Duncan to America’s Choice Superintendent’s Symposium
• An Open Letter to NCTE Members about the Common Core State Standards
• Gates Gives 15 States an Edge in Race to the Top
• Connecting the Dots
• Dear DOE
• OBAMA IS A CORPORATE MARKETING CREATION
• Top Meanest Cities
• Why Are People Acting Surprised by Obama?
• Bigness
• Labor Beat: Sec. of Education Duncan Pushing The Chicago Plan

• Journals Inflate Their Prestige by Coercing Authors to Cite Them
• Sorry, You’re Not Allowed to Drop Out. Please Resume Learning.
• CHS Minimum Writing Requirements in ALL Classes
• Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?
• The architecture meltdown
• Gov. Brownback’s plan to post teachers’ rankings causes outcry; GOP senator describes plan as ‘toxic’
• School head: New law has cost implications
• On the road again: State schools chief popular headliner across the country
• What You (Really) Need to Know
• ALEC’s Arizona Escort Service
• Statement from the Anthropology Library Occupation
• KIPP Memphis charter school lands $3M to expand Growth fund touts its ‘solid academic track record’
• Confronting the Gates Foundation’s ‘Brass-Knuckle’ Dominance
• Professor Says Naval Academy Inflates Applicant Numbers to Improve Ranking
• CPS enters into compact agreement with Gates Foundation
• School superintendents’ overseas trip questioned
• Education Group Tries to Rebound After Diatribe
• Scandal At Bronx High School May Put Graduation In Jeopardy For Hundreds Of Students
• State’s Testing Chief Resigns
• Teacher Faction Expands to L.A.
• Ackerman seeks unemployment check
• Teach for America has become embedded in New Orleans education
• Students lose individual attention as class sizes swell
• Judge says 2 Elizabeth school board whistleblowers can’t stop district probe into leaked lunch program documents
• New Orleans Recovery School District will use teacher evaluations in deciding layoffs
• City prepares to spend nearly $1 billion on education consultants as it fires 4,100 teachers
• Public School Teachers: Are We an Endangered Species?
• The disgraceful interrogation of L.A. school librarians
• The Failure of American Schools
• Who’s the power behind CMS?
• Billionaires gather in Arizona to discuss giving
• Do American Students Study Too Hard?
• Illinois Education Overhaul at Risk
• Norway Is Best Place To Be A Mom; U.S. Lags
• A Challenge to the Superintendent in the Texas Cheerleader Assault Case
• Chicago Teachers Union Governing Body Supports Changes to SB7
• Ex-GM exec Roy S. Roberts ‘excited’ to take over DPS
• Testing Madness: Charlotte Today, Your Schools Tomorrow
• Library backers urge school board to reconsider cuts
• It’s Teacher Depreciation Week in Florida
• The new college graduate
• Florida charters less diverse than other public schools
• Hundreds Protest Hiring of Katonah Superintendent
• The Test Will Go On
• The Limits of School Reform
• Our kind of guy to lead Chicago schools
• Michigan Emergency Manager Robert Bobb Issues Layoff Notice to All Detroit Public School Teachers
• Donors Urged School Ouster
• A rising hunger among children BMC sees more who are dangerously thin and facing lasting problems
• Key Policy Letter from the Education Secretary
• As Best Schools Compete for Best Performers, Students May Be Left Behind
• Akron’s White Hat gets poor grades for students
• Parent trigger rules are, with a nod to Colbert, reforminess
• Memphis board delays school year’s start indefinitely in demand for city funds
• NYC Schools Approve $2.7 Million Deal with Murdoch-Linked Firm to Track Student Performance
• Abramson Charter in eastern New Orleans shut down amid TP investigation into startling misconduct
• Tom Vander Ark’s New York-Area Charter Schools Falter
• ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection
• Duncan hails NMI school system for its accomplishments
• U. of Pennsylvania Professor Accuses Colleagues of Slanted Research
• Teachers Could Defer Obama Support
• Smells Like School Spirit
• I Don’t Read Huffington Post; Maybe You Shouldn’t Either
• Number of the Week: U.S. Teachers’ Hours Among World’s Longest
• Haslam says gift to Presbyterian Day School in Memphis raises bar for educators
• New force in Illinois quickly pushes state toward school reform
• A Lightning Rod on U.T. Board, Regent Is Not Deterred
• Schools Must Adapt to Markets, Too
• Industry Puts Heat on Schools to Teach Skills Employers Need
• The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for ‘Superman’ and One Teacher’s Two Cents
• Launching the FY2011 Investing in Innovation (i3) Competition
• As Mayor Holds Firm on Teacher Layoffs, Some See Reasons Beyond Money

“THE WASHINGTON POST: Why do you think [Osama] bin Laden has not been caught?

THE PRESIDENT: Because he’s hiding.”

“Imagine if baseball were taught the way science is taught in most inner-city schools. Schoolchildren would get lectures about the history of the World Series. High school students would occasionally reproduce famous plays of the past. Nobody would get in the game themselves until graduate school.”

“Democracy is meaningless if the people can’t get accurate information.”

“Activism at its most contagious is always linked to celebration and joy.”

“I believe that the only way to make a major improvement in our educational system is through privatization to the point at which a substantial fraction of all educational service is rendered to individuals by private enterprises. Nothing else will destroy or even greatly weaken the power of the educational establishment–a necessary pre-condition for radical improvement in our educational system.. . .The privatization of schooling would produce a new, highly active and profitable industry. . . .””

“It’s [Harcourt Assessment mishaps] a concern to us on a number of levels. I’ve heard negative press reports on every test publisher we’ve ever done business with. There’s no relationship you can have with a contractor who hasn’t made a mistake.”

“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all–regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.”

“We strongly support the No Child Left Behind legislation because it works to create a K through 12 system that is more competitive with the educational systems of other industrialized nations and will lead to a better educated and more highly skilled American workforce in the future. “

“Armstrong Williams’ $240,000 contract was his cut from the Bush voucher Bagman, Rod Paige.”

“The Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan, with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, is not qualified to teach at all in a Chicago public school. Literally with no education qualifications, he can dictate what goes on in the education of 436,000 children and 50,000 employees in 600 different school communities.”

“Chicago Public Schools has embarked on an untested effort to charterize and privatize our schools, while giving them more money. The Daley team has had nine years to turn these schools around. They are now risking the futures of poor and minority students in struggling schools on an untested experiment. Renaissance 2010 will turn over entire schools to groups or businesses with no track record of turning around struggling, high-poverty schools.”

” Overall, the jobs of the future will require only modest skill growth. In fact, the demand for increased skills is increasing more slowly than in the past. School improvement may be a good idea, but we need better reasons than a false skills crisis. If we reform schools for the wrong reasons, we will reform them in the wrong ways.”

“The business man has, of course, not said to himself: ‘I will have the public school train office boys and clerks for me, so that I may have them cheap’;but he has thought, and sometimes said: ‘Teach the children to write legibly, and to figure accurately and quickly; to acquire habits of punctuality and order; to be prompt to obey, and not question why; and you will fit them to make their way in the world as I have made mine.'”

“How quickly they point to the teachers when they wish to cast blame for a failing federal program. It, of course, couldn’t possibly be that the testing program simply doesn’t address the problems of education, could it?”

“Even at the best, mini-schools can provide only a partial solution. Even if all 200 of the new or proposed ones flourish, a vast majority of New York’s high school pupils will still attend large, traditional schools. The Klein and Bloomberg administrations cannot possibly succeed in their ambitious and admirable goals for public education if large high schools remain the stepchildren of the system, whether being closed or being overwhelmed.”

“Of course, Behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public. “

“People have to remember that Iraq is the size of California and Baghdad is the size of Los Angeles. If the news reported all the deaths in Los Angeles on a daily basis no one would ever go to Disneyland.”

“School takover does not come with pixie dust and a magic wand.”

“Recess retreats from the school landscape, and that is a sin.

You cannot yank the major source of joy from the school day without demoralizing our young. At the least, we are in danger of producing generations of feeble-weenie adults who don’t know an aggie from a steelie or double Dutch from a Dutch oven.

Taking recess from schoolchildren is hideous, cruel, unconscionable, intolerable, mean, detestable, shortsighted, mind-numbing, grotesque, and if I may quote a great American, Daffy Duck, at his loud, indignant, moist, lisping best, it is “des-th-picable! ”

“NCLB usurps the power of local communities to choose their own policies and programs. It represents a power grab on the part of the federal government that is unprecedented in the history of U. S. education”

” Above all, NCLB assumes that neither children, their families, their teachers, nor their communities can be trusted to make important decisions about their schools. It defines such parties as special biased self-interest, whose judgment is inferior to that of the bureaucrats at the Department of Education and the various testing services. “

“If we lived in an alternate universe where income equality really was a goal of federal economic policy and an NCLB-like system of sanctions put pressure on the titans of industry and commerce to attain such a lofty goal, what might be appropriate remedies for such a dismal performance: “corrective action?” to borrow the language of NCLB sanctions, economic restructuring? reconstitution of our major corporations? How about “state takeover”?”

“Nothing you do for children is ever wasted.”

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. “

“The issue of education is close to my heart and on this vital issue there’s no one I trust more than Margaret Spellings.”

“Every time I hear the news
That old feeling comes back on;
We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the Big Fool says to push on. “

Testing Moratorium. Call for a national or state-by-state moratorium on high-stakes testing until such tests can be established as having predictive value. That is, unless we can link test scores to some measure of success after leaving school they should not be given. Why deny a child a diploma or grade promotion, or teachers their jobs, if the tests used for these decisions cannot predict future success or measure the effectiveness of the schools? So far, no such evidence has been forthcoming, even as we pour bilions of dollars into testing and threaten students, their families, and teachers with dire consequences based on these scores.”

“NCLB is set up to penalize schools that actually do attempt to make a difference for our poor and minority students. . . . Schools with more diverse populations are being punished by NCLB. Called the “diversity penalty,” this phenomenon occurs because the greater the diversity in a school the more likely the school will fail to meet AYP. (Remember that failing to meet AYP means that schools will be punished.) This is because of a specific feature of the legislation which says that if just one so-called subgroup fails to meet the standard, the entire school fails. For example, in one Florida school district a school previously judged to be outstanding suddenly found itself rated as failing even though 80 percent of its students were judged to be proficient in math and 88 percent in reading. The reason for the failing score was that a group of 45 special education students, out of a population of 1,150 students, failed to improve their test scores. But a neighboring school, with 39 special education students, did not have the scores of these students counted–because there have to be 40 students in any subgroup to be measured. Clearly the more subgroups a school tries to serve, groups that are defined by racial or income status, the greater the likelihood that the school will not make AYP.”

“Here are some of the things kids at Garfield/Franklin elementary in Muscatine, Iowa, no longer do: eagle watch on the Mississippii River, go on field trips to the University of Iowa’s Museum of Natural History, and have two daily recesses. . . . Creative writing, social studies and computer work have all become occasional indulgences. Now that the standardized fill-in-the-bubble test is the foundation upon which the public schools rest–now that a federal law called No Child Left Behind mandates that kids as young as nine meet benchmarks in reading and math or jeopardize their school’s reputation–there’s little time for anything else.”

“Teacher pay-for-performance is the latest reform idea sweeping the nation. The claims that these magic merit pay programs will improve teacher effectiveness and raise student achievement are a utopian illusion. Political grandstanding, teacher bashing and unfunded government mandates do not address any of the real problems facing the nation’s public schools.”

“If there has ever been a classic example of lockstep, one-size-fits-all, individuality-out-the-door, ideological gobbledygook, this is it. If, indeed, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, No Child Left Behind is educational asphalt.”

“To date there is no consistent evidence that high-stakes testing works to increase achievement.”

“I have the feeling that 60% of what you say is crap.”

“Schools alone can’t cure fetal alcohol syndrome, lead poisoning, low birth-weight-induced cognitive deficits, undetected hearing and vision deficits or asthma, rampant in some urban areas. Educators alone cannot insure that poor mothers-to-be get proper prenatal care or that poor children get the kinds of eye and dental examinations they need or treatment for ear infections, infections which if treated are nothing serious but if not can cause hearing loss, etc. Schools alone cannot eliminate dangerous working conditions, sub-poverty wages or erratic housing patterns. “

“Our children have been hijacked and shackled by bad policy and bad politics. “

“One day in McKee High School I made a breakthrough of some kind, and for me there was kind of a white blazing light in the room and I went, ‘Jesus, this is absolutely orgasmic in an intellectual and emotional sense.’

We were dealing with a poem and it was called–the poem was called ‘My Papa’s Waltz.’ You’re always telling the kids, ‘Look for the deeper meaning,’ and then there would be a test. But I said to the kids, ‘Let’s get inside the poem. What’s going on in here?’ And there was an explosion for me at that moment because we were doing it together. I wasn’t a teacher anymore, as in ‘I know everything and you’re just out there. I tell you what you need to know.’ Instead I said, ‘You tell me what’s happening. Tell me what’s going on in here.’ That was a turning point that colored my whole teaching career. “

“There are stark and causal relationships between economic status and school “achievement” in the US and every other country that tracks the relevant data. Census Bureau figures show that between 1967 and 2001, the share of total income flowing to the bottom 60% of US households fell from 32% to 27%. The share of total income to the top 5% rose from under 18% to over 22%. The percentage to the group in the middle barely changed. Those percentages could easily be said to mirror test scores except, of course, the “achievement gap” has closed a bit in contrast to the economic gap. In that context the schools have been doing a bang-up job. For someone from the educated middle class to be pointing fingers at the lack of parenting skills of those living under the burdens of decades of grinding poverty, systematic racism, and governmental neglect is…well, insensitive doesn’t quite capture it all. I’m not sure what does. “

“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves. “

“I teach EBD and LD high school students. One of my students who is extremely bright but has a very slow processing speed was compelled to spend 26.36 actual hours (4.2 instructional days) on the WKCE, and even then he wasn’t finished, so his score still will not reflect his true ability. There are reams of existing information on this young man from school and outside psychologists documenting his skills; nevertheless, he was taken out of 24 instructional periods BEYOND what the school had already allotted for testing so that he could achieve a score close to representative of his already VERY well-documented skills. Because of his unique learning style, this student struggles to keep up in school in spite of his above-average intelligence-he repeatedly questioned the value of a test that would cause him to miss the equivalent of three additional days of class beyond the time already missed by his classmates. Clearly, this test format is highly disruptive and very inappropriate for such a young man, but he would never qualify for that very small percentage of alternative assessment students because he is not cognitively disabled. The obvious practical answer would be to skip the extra-time accommodation, but then his scores would have been inaccurate AND harmful to the school’s AYP. The test is actually interfering with his education. “

“Which takes longer: Form a new government in Iraq or fund schools in Texas?

Three months ago, Iraq held elections and began the process of forming a government after decades of dictatorship.

Three months ago, the Texas Legislature met with the primary job of finding a way to adequately pay for the state’s public schools.

90 days later and the Iraqis have a government.

90 days later, the Texas Legislature is seized up worse than a ’69 Falcon with an empty crankcase.”

“Children have become faceless student numbers computer-matched to student scores, individuals being forced into the same mold with no recognition of their differences. School is monotonous drill instead of the creative, exciting, stimulating environment that it should be. “

“The paperwork and meetings involved to support an IEP are intensive. They are also worthless, as these kids must pass the same test as “normal” students without all of the accommodations they are familiar with. It is like taking a deaf person’s hearing aid away and expecting him to pass an oral quiz. “

“We don’t need people who can spit back facts. We’ve got Google.”

“Free the markets. Screw the people.”

” The Department has posted sample tests for students and parents to use, including the correct answers, so they can work on weak areas and be prepared for the test; for the first time the test questions are written by Arizona teachers so the questions will be a good match to what is taught in class; and the student reports will be sent to parents in early June as opposed to September in the event that a student may need any tutoring or other assistance over the summer.”

“The No Child Left Behind Act is the most damaging, intrusive piece of legislation to enter education in my 32 years as a public school administrator. “

“He made no resistance whatever, and was stabbed in the back.”

“Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.”

“We look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will make–it would hope–put a free press’s mind at ease that you’re not being denied information you shouldn’t see.”

“Reliable data should enter the language as a new euphemism for budget cuts to programs that serve the poor.”

“If the federal government is forced to fund NCLB, it’ll still be bad. Washington is defining accountability and achievement all wrong. Funding the wrong thing still leaves a wrong thing. “

“”Institutions like Juilliard have the responsibility to differentiate between the marketplace and the art form. Knowing…that demand is not at its peak, you don’t create an organ department of 50 majors; right now, we have nine. But [we] have a responsibility to educate individuals who can knowledgeably carry forward the traditions of this great instrument. If you develop everything based on the marketplace,you’ll eventually have a school dedicated to ‘American Idol.'”

• U.S. Secretary of Education Duncan to Join Army Chief of Staff Gen. Casey in Announcing ‘Project Pass’ in Radcliff, Ky
• From the South Bronx to West Point A public school discovers the Army
• Youth Served: Military Recruiters Pin Hopes on High School Students
• Concerns Raised Over School Privacy Notice
• The Principal Problem
• Save Senn! Stop the Military Takeover Of Our Community High School
• High School Recruiting
• Uncle Sam Wants Your Kids — Now!
• Military Recruiters Target Schools Strategically
• Army official faces charges
• Why the Superintendent Failed
• Military-Academy Plan Draws Fire in Chicago
• Marine recruiting program takes educators to school
• Career Path for High Schoolers
• Army’s War Game Recruits Kids
• Group Seeks School Access
• The War on Our School-Children
• Superintendents, Inc.
• Hard lessons from poetry class: Speech is free unless it’s critical
• Marine recruiter charged with rape of Blooming Grove girl, 16
• New York’s Small Schools Uneasy Inside Big Ones
• The McGraw-Hill Companies Homeland Security Summit & Exposition
• Repetitive writing is fine as discipline, Vallas says
• The Temps of War: Blue-Collar Workers Ship Out for Iraq
• Military Schools Exempted from ‘No Child Left Behind’ Requirements
• Turning Troops Into Teachers
• Vowel Boot Camp
• Give Me 15: Class Discipline, Military-Style
• Md. School Tries an About-Face
• School recruiters meet resistance
• 4,000 Names Given to Military Recruiters
• Military recruiters rile ACLU
• Law Schools Seek to Regain Ability to Bar Military Recruiters
• Letting the Troops Through the School Door
• U.S. Military Recruiters’ New Pitch is Aimed at the Parents
• Marine Recruiter Charged With Assaulting Md. Girl
• Army getting kids’ names, Schools aiding armed forces
• Casualties at Home
• Hub fourth-graders take a military approach to MCAS math
• Schools need more vigor, less rigor
• No Child Unrecruited
• Lowering the Bar: Kindergarten Recruitment
• Your Tax Dollars at Work: Stealth Bomber Performs at RPI Graduation
• School recruiting rules tightened
• Beyond Opt-out
• Counter-Recruiters’ Shadowing the Military

• Here’s a Link to Gerald Bracey’s Website
• 21st-Century Skills: Ban It, or Rename It?
• Remembering Gerald Bracey
• What Jerry Bracey would have said about Locke High
• The problem is poverty: Evidence from Gerald Bracey
• Radical idea: Public schools aren’t an awful mess
• SALF-gate? 49,000 questions for Education Secretary Arne Duncan
• In Tribute to Gerald Bracey and His Campaign to Keep Education Pundits Honest
• Gadfly or Champion? Gerald Bracey, a little of both
• Jerry Bracey—equal opportunity critic
• Tribute to Jerry Bracey — Blogger and Friend
• Contrarian Writer Gerald Bracey Dies
• Gerald Bracey Will be Missed
• A gadfly remembered: Jerry Bracey
• Gerald Bracey is dead, but his voice lives on…
• RIP Gerald Bracey: Another Good Man Gone Down
• Biting critic of national education policy
• The death of Gerald Bracey is a loss for education
• Outspoken public schools advocate Bracey dies at 69
• Hello, Friends of Jerry Bracey
• If you have tears. . . .

• • Arne Duncan: Fund Community Colleges, Not Prisons
  • Ask the Teachers
  • Duncan Talks Obama Education Record at Mom Congress
  • Duncan Talks Obama Education Record at Mom Congress
  • Duncan Enlists Sharpton’s Civil Rights Network in Education Reform
  • Chicago Debate League
  • The New Platform for Learning
  • On a Legislative Proposal in South Carolina to Block Implementation of the Common Core Academic Standards
  • Secretary Arne Duncan Addresses the Fourth Annual IES Research Conference
  • The New Platform for Learning
  • Launching Project RESPECT
  • Reforming Education To Fill Technical Jobs In Minnesota
  • Duncan: It’s Time to Create Race to Top for Districts
  • State Warned on Race to Top
  • Three Steps to Fix Our Schools
  • A Well-Rounded Curriculum in the Age of Accountability
  • National Press Call on Race to the Top
  • 7 States Win Federal Competition
  • i3 Projects Receive $18 Million in Matching Funds from Private Sector
  • Delaware earns Race to the Top early childhood learning money
  • U.S. Adults Fare Poorly in a Study of Skills
  • Q-and-A: Back to school with Arne Duncan
  • Arne on Twitter
  • Education Secretary Arne Duncan warns not to ‘be alarmed’ by lower test scores
  • State’s tougher testing is hailed
  • Duncan Pushes Back on Attacks on Common Core Standards
  • We Should Keep Online Testing, But We Should Learn From ISTEP+ Failures
  • More Substantive and Lasting than a Bagel Breakfast
  • Choosing the Right Battles: Remarks and a Conversation Remarks of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting
  • Beyond the Bubble Tests: The Next Generation of Assessments
  • Value Choices: Investing in High-Quality Preschool
  • The Tennessee Way: Lessons for the Nation
  • Partners for Success: Secretary Arne Duncan’s Remarks to the National Association of State Boards of Education
  • The New Platform for Learning
  • Arne Duncan on Fixing Dallas H.S.
  • Moving Forward, Staying Focused
  • Moving Forward, Staying Focused
  • speech, National Press Club
  • Mayors Should Run Schools
  • Democratic National Convention Speech

• Intrusive to the core: Feds overreach on ed standards
• Collaborating for the Common Core
• Lexia Introduces Lexia Reading Core5 for Mastery of Common Core Skills through Grade 5
• The ‘fighting spirit’ of the school committee
• Publishers Gear Up for The Common Core
• I Wandered Lonely as a Teacher
• STOP Common Core
• Heinemann Digital Campus
• William Blake Enters the Fourth Grade
• MetaMetrics Partners With ReadWorks to Provide Lexile Measures for Non-Fiction Reading Passage Bank
• PARCC Releases Initial Set of Test Items and Task Prototypes
• Six Degrees of Insanity: ‘Reforming’ Education
• With the Help of Student Achievement Partners, National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers Declare Computers Better than Teachers at Choosing Books
• Eight problems with Common Core Standards
• Yes, Those Standards ARE Gold
• Grade 8 Common Core ELA Sample Questions
• Market-Based Think Tank Opposes Common Core
• What Can We Do About the Common Core?
• Private firms eyeing profits from public schools
• Academics Form Group to Push Common Core
• FLORIDA COLLEGE SYSTEM TEACHER EDUCATOR PROGRAMS 1ST IN NATION TO IMPLEMENT COMMON CORE TEACHER TRAINING
• What’s a Math Educator to Do?
• Introducing an Instructional Framework Aligned to the Common Core State Standards
• Look at Who’s Partnering with Verizon to Bring Us Common Core Offal
• CEO Brizard Names Chief Transformation Officer to Lead New Office of Strategy Management
• Is inBloom Engaged in Identity Theft?
• Principal warns parents: ‘Don’t buy the bunk’ about new Common Core tests
• More Details on InBloom’s Plans for Student Data
• Common-Assessment Groups to Undergo New Federal Review Process
• Educational Accountability Red Flags
• Teaching Parents About the Common Core
• Susan Ohanian Responds to Marc Tucker re Common Core
• New School tests called excessive
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• Student education data cloud inBloom puts sensitive information at risk, jeopardizes the futures of city and state students
• Teaching Eight-Year-Olds to Sound Like Bankers
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• Conservatives poor stewards of education funds
• The Cost of Cuts: When we lose librarians, it’s the kids who suffer most
• PARCC Claims to Measure Skills Needed for ‘Life Beyond High School’
• A Letter from Randi Weingarten about Share My Lesson
• They’re Back!
• K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents
• How Many Reformers Does it Take to Really Fix a School?
• Bill Would Delay Next Generation Test Until Schools Have Technology Ready
• The truth about fiction
• Professor of Education Policy and Research Written Testimony Supporting the End of Common Core Standards Implementation
• New Curriculum on Tap Math, English Standards to Change for Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade
• What the Press Leaves out
• Whoo-Hoo! Occupy the Schools

Common Core: More Tests, But Not Better

Fair Test provides a good summary of the problem, which most people are ignoring.

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Dinosaurs and the Gospel

According to Snopes.com, this is the first page of an actual ‘science’ quiz given to fourth graders Blue Ridge Christian Academy, a private religious school. http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/09/creationism_in_school_science_quiz_gets_it_totally_wrong.html?utm_source=tw&utm;_medium=sm&utm;_campaign=button_toolbar

Union Thug

Grammarian, orator, geometrician; painter, gymnastic teacher, physician; fortune-teller, rope-dancer, conjuror,—she knew everything.

Vultures of a Feather

‘Not using poverty as an excuse. . . .’ –Arne Duncan making the Broad Prize 2013 announcement, as he flubs that other Houston school miracle worker Rod Price’s name, Sept. 25, 2013

Look at the suits stand and applaud each other.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QxPz_q0ETg&sns;=em