Monday, January 22, 2018

WAMU - NPR Investigation Uncovers Cooked Data In Ballou High Graduation Rates

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Ballou teacher Monica Brokenborough In November 2017 an investigative reporter at the NPR affiliate WAMU, Kate McGee, started listening ...
2 comments:
Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Education Reform Hasn't Hit A Wall; It Is The Wall

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Award winning former NY principal, Carol Burris analyzes the whopping 14 point nationwide drop in SAT scores for 2015 in this Washington P...
Friday, May 8, 2015

Are Charter Schools the Answer?

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Furman University in South Carolina professor Paul Thomas nicely summed up the unimpressive track record of over a decade of promoting ...
2 comments:
Thursday, April 16, 2015

Love of Reading and Writing Beats A "Reform" Focus

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Valarie Strauss posted an eloquent post by Nancie Atwell, the renowned founder of the Center for Teaching and Learning and an award-winning ...
Monday, August 18, 2014

Another Charter Scandal -- The Lack of Accountability Is Like the Wild West

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Emma Brown revealed in the Washington Post  in December that Jeremy Williams, the former DC Public Charter School Board CFO, helped Option...
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Stepping Back to Consider What's Wrong With Existing Reform Emphasis

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The NY Times published an interesting op-ed yesterday by University of California Professor David Kirp . This is just one of many critique...
Thursday, March 13, 2014

Charters Re-segregate Public Schools -- New Study Tells How

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GW professor Iris Rotberg penned an article in the Kappan Magazine a version of which was re-printed in Valerie Strauss' column today ...
Wednesday, February 26, 2014

DC School Reform: "Miraculous" Success or Miserable Failure

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Yesterday, in a Post Op-ed, former Post Publisher Donald Graham challenged elected officials and candidates for mayor not to look under th...
Friday, January 31, 2014

Roosevelt HS' Struggle Illustrates DCPS' Problem

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... and Kaya Henderson refused to comment for this excellent story in the City Paper and for the charts that the article refers to go here ...
Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Too Soon to Celebrate A Rise in DC NAEP Scores

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While DCPS, TFA, Arne Duncan, and the Washington Post were quick to declare the recent rise in NAEP scores in DC as validation of the stra...
Monday, October 7, 2013

Pop the Champaign for DC CAS Score Gains? Think Again.

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DC Council Education Chair David Catania and others have now blown the whistle on the manipulation of cut scores that led to the recently ...
Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The Charter Experiment Is At Best a Mixed Bag: The New Orleans Case

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In this look back at the charter record since Katrina, a feature Newsweek magazine story asks whether this new paradigm in which schools can...
Monday, September 16, 2013

Realities of Race To The Top Implementation

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In a new report from the Broader Bolder Approch to Education, the impact of Race to the Top funding from the US Department of Education is a...
Wednesday, May 29, 2013

How So-called Education Reform Serves to Preserve the Status Quo

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Valerie Strauss posted an analysis worth reading by Arthur H. Camins   Camins describes how the reform strategies promoted by the US Depa...
Wednesday, January 16, 2013

School Professional Climate Trumps Individual Teacher Characteristics

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A report from the new director of the Consortium for Chicago Schools Research says that the collaborative climate in a school is more imp...
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Friday, January 11, 2013

What Are Charter Schools Really For?

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The Greater Greater Washington blog's Ken Archer takes Emma Brown's expose of charter school expulsions, and charters' refusal...

Students First Ranks States and Ironically Puts Students Last

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When Michelle Rhee's "Students First" money raising, privatization advocacy empire released their supposed "ranking of ...
Saturday, November 17, 2012

Drifting Toward Two School Systems, Separate and Unequal

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Ken Archer of the Greater Greater Washington blog makes the argument that the current proposal by the Chancellor to close 20 schools move...
Monday, November 5, 2012

DC's IMPACT contrasted with Montgomery's Proven Approach

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The November issue of ASCD's Education Leadership magazine,is devoted entirely to teacher evaluation. An article by Mark Simon compare...
Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Growing Movement Against School Closures as a Reform Strategy Emerges in Five Cities

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According to an article in Ed Week , a growing movement of parents, public school advocates and education researchers who have seen the cost...
Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Wall Street Journal Op-ed by Randi Weingarten and Karen Lewis Monday Offers Insight About What the Chicago Strike Accomplished

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Together, Weingarten and Lewis offer one of the most cogent analyses of the meaning of the Chicago strike below...
Tuesday, September 18, 2012

What Provoked the Chicago Teachers Strike? Bad Managment Philosophy

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Greg Anrig writes in the Pacific Standard magazine that the Chicago teachers strike is at bottom a response by teachers to an outmoded Tay...
Friday, September 14, 2012

Huffington Post Column Cuts Through to What the Chicago Teachers Strike is Really About

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In the Huffington Post today, BBA Coodinator Elaine Weiss and University of Illinois professor Kevin Kumashiro cut through the general m...
Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger Points Out What's At Stake In Chicago Teachers' Strike

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From a DC public school parent perspective, what's important about the Chicago teachers strike is that teachers are finally standing u...
Thursday, August 16, 2012

IG "Investigation" Does Not Bring Closure to Testing Scandal

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At long last, the DC Inspector General issued his report, the one requested by DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson on whether there was or was ...
Thursday, July 12, 2012

Chicago Turnaround Strategy Comes Up Short

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A new study of schools that were zero-base staffed by Chicago's main "turnaround" vendor shows that they were outperformed by ...
1 comment:
Friday, June 15, 2012

Is Teacher Churn Undermining Real Education Reform in D.C.?

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An Op-ed in this Sunday's Washington Post calls attention to the rate of turnover of both teachers and principals as a huge barrior to m...
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Monday, June 11, 2012

Time to Re-Think Schools Governance

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Deborah Simmons in the Washington Times looks at the unaccountable management of DCPS and says its time for the public to re-institute some...
Sunday, May 6, 2012

Get Rid of Teachers or Encourage Them To Stay -- What's Best to Improve Schools?

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The subject of teacher turnover is receiving new scrutiny with the recent publication of research that demonstrates that teacher turnover ...
Thursday, March 22, 2012

New Study Documents the Negative Effects of Teacher Turnover

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Researchers Matthew Ronfeldt from the University of Michigan, Susanna Loeb from Stanford, and Jim Wyckoff from the University of Virginia ju...
Monday, March 12, 2012

The New Crisis in DCPS and Elsewhere: Test-Prep Pressures Driving the Best Teachers Out of Teaching

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One of the least discussed effects of the current corporate ed reform culture that ignores the knowledge of educators, insisting instead on ...
Wednesday, February 15, 2012

21st Century Schools Fund Warns of Dangers in the IFF Study

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Mary Filardo and Michael Siegel, who both sit on the Education Finance Commission for the District of Columbia have authored a critique of...
Thursday, February 9, 2012

Robert McCartney Calls for Full-Scale Investigation of DCPS

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In today's Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney called for a full-scale investigation of the DCPS cheating scandal along the li...
Monday, January 30, 2012

IFF Study Released to Criticism of Research Methodology

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Quality Schools, Every Child, Every Neighborhood Indeed A response by Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform The Illinois ...
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Sunday, January 22, 2012

Facts Not What They Seem on Teacher Evaluation Study -- Strauss Corrects Rhee

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Valarie Strauss responds in her Washington Post column to Michelle Rhee's inaccurate reference of a new study on use of value added st...
Friday, January 6, 2012

Test Erasures Continue -- Questionable Investigation Remains Under the Rug

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In his DC Insider Column in the Washington Post, Sunday, Bill Turque continues to follow the ongoing pattern of test score erasures and th...
1 comment:
Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Illinois Facility Fund

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What does the Illinois Facility Fund know about education? Not much. What the Illinois Facility Fund knows a lot about though is real esta...
1 comment:
Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Parents Anticipate Report as Assault on Low-Income Neighborhood Schools

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The Deputy Mayor for Education, with a 100,000 dollar grant from the Walton Family Foundation, engaged IFF (Illinois Facility Fund) to...
Friday, August 19, 2011

Illinois Facilities Fund Hired to Study School Closing/Opening Needs in DCPS

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Valerie Strauss correctly questions in her column today why DCPS would want to hire a pro-charter school company from Illinois to advise t...
Saturday, July 30, 2011

Photos from the Save Our Schools Rally and March, July 30, 2011

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Thursday, July 21, 2011

How High Stakes Testing Led to Cheating Scandals in Atlanta and Washington DC

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Dana Goldstein has penned another insightful column on the origin of the testing scandals and hits the nail right on the head. This time t...
Friday, July 8, 2011

Wishing Erasuregate Away DCPS Learns Nothing from Atlanta

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In an article in the Post this morning , Bill Turque paints a picture of a stark contrast between the approach taken in Atlanta and DCPS w...
Sunday, June 12, 2011

Robbing Schools to Fatten Central Administration

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There seems to be a need for greater DC Council scrutiny over the DCPS budget. Either DCPS budget expert Mary Levy is right and the propo...
Monday, June 6, 2011

Teacher Evaluation that Works -- Designed Together With Teachers

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Doug Prouty, MCEA President The NY Times reported today on the Montgomery County teacher evaluation system , built collaboratively with...
1 comment:
Thursday, May 5, 2011

USA Today Features Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform Petition

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With over 3,700 signatures collected on our petition for a federal investigation of "erasuregate," USA Today followed-up on their ...
Monday, April 11, 2011

Sign the Petition !!

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   DC public schools, under former Chancellor Michelle Rhee, has become obsessed with testing. Teacher pay is tied to test scores. Principal...
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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

USA Today Reveals Possible Widespread Test Irregularities Under Michelle Rhee

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USA Today published Monday a lengthy analysis of possible widespread cheating at the majority of schools during the tenure of DC Chancel...
Tuesday, March 8, 2011

DCPS Budget and Teacher Data Included in Testimony Presented Friday

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Findings from my analysis included in testimony to the DC Council on Friday, March 4 and presented again as testimony to Mayor Vincent Gra...
1 comment:
Monday, February 21, 2011

"Middle-America" Uprising in Wisconsin

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Monday, February 14, 2011

Student Achievement Under Rhee No Better than Her Predecessors

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According to a new study of DCPS student achievement on NAEP scores , "the nation's report card," Alan Ginsburg, former direct...