tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56718200694292634642024-02-19T00:46:51.076-05:00"Teachers & Parents for Real Education Reform"An initiative of teachers and parents in the DC Public Schools aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning. We aim to get the administration and the union focused on what matters -- support for high quality teaching.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-15889828224766523052018-01-22T10:52:00.001-05:002018-01-22T11:06:10.566-05:00WAMU - NPR Investigation Uncovers Cooked Data In Ballou High Graduation Rates
Ballou teacher Monica Brokenborough
In November 2017 an investigative reporter at the NPR affiliate WAMU, Kate McGee, started listening to teachers. What she discovered (here) was systematic granting of credit to students who didn't show up much, and graduating students who didn't meet the requirements for graduation at Ballou High School. But the reported scandal soon led to the realization Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-17641369483077844592015-09-08T11:58:00.002-04:002015-09-08T12:05:15.427-04:00Education Reform Hasn't Hit A Wall; It Is The Wall
Award winning former NY principal, Carol Burris analyzes the whopping 14 point nationwide drop in SAT scores for 2015 in this Washington Post column.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-19242696163022433002015-05-08T11:47:00.003-04:002015-05-08T11:50:34.520-04:00Are Charter Schools the Answer?
Furman University in South Carolina professor Paul Thomas nicely summed up the unimpressive track record of over a decade of promoting "choice" in US Education Policy in a post this week, and Valarie Strauss reprinted it here. Its worth remembering and circulating these stark realities as the uninformed myths about charter schools continue. Thomas reflects national data and his closely Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-44351725684733666062015-04-16T17:24:00.002-04:002015-04-16T17:40:30.540-04:00Love of Reading and Writing Beats A "Reform" FocusValarie Strauss posted an eloquent post by Nancie Atwell, the renowned founder of the Center for Teaching and Learning and an award-winning Middle School educator from Maine, describing her approach to teaching a love of reading and writing as more useful than the current strategies aimed at Common Core. It's worth a read to remind us what is really important. What else is there to say?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-30028368551635552132014-08-18T22:02:00.000-04:002015-02-16T18:39:00.684-05:00Another Charter Scandal -- The Lack of Accountability Is Like the Wild West
Emma Brown revealed in the Washington Post in December that Jeremy Williams, the former DC Public Charter School Board CFO, helped Options Public Charter School and other charters funnel millions to privately owned contracting companies they owned and avoid oversight. Williams received $150,000 from the Options Board for his favors. The Washington Post only obtained the information by Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-44332981000272280262014-08-18T14:03:00.003-04:002014-08-18T14:11:49.114-04:00Stepping Back to Consider What's Wrong With Existing Reform Emphasis
The NY Times published an interesting op-ed yesterday by University of California Professor David Kirp. This is just one of many critiques that have started to emerge now that the 8 years of reform in DC have proven not to move the needle for the students who need improvement most. It is time to consider whether the wrong reforms have been chosen in Washington DC and to consider what the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-51025119935637130882014-03-13T16:06:00.003-04:002014-03-13T16:06:48.395-04:00Charters Re-segregate Public Schools -- New Study Tells How
GW professor Iris Rotberg penned an article in the Kappan Magazine a version of which was re-printed in Valerie Strauss' column today describing the various ways that charter schools are re-segregating education. The research is clear, Rotberg argues, but policy makers are just ignoring it and are subverting the intention of Brown v Board.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-65240555190059888662014-02-26T11:11:00.001-05:002014-03-13T16:15:18.458-04:00DC School Reform: "Miraculous" Success or Miserable Failure
Yesterday, in a Post Op-ed, former Post Publisher Donald Graham challenged elected officials and candidates for mayor not to look under the hood of DC school reform but to stay the course with Kaya Henderson, the miracle worker chancellor who has raised student test scores. But candidate for mayor Andy Shallal looked under the hood ten days earlier in a February 14 White Paper on Education Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-69960853893395877062014-01-31T09:36:00.002-05:002014-01-31T09:50:50.534-05:00Roosevelt HS' Struggle Illustrates DCPS' Problem... 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.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-6589472477610205682013-11-12T15:08:00.002-05:002013-11-19T17:27:40.315-05:00Too Soon to Celebrate A Rise in DC NAEP Scores
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 strategies put into place by Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson, more observant analysts say, "not so fast." James Morrow of PBS' Learning Matters blog cogently described here why those conclusions are not warranted. In fact, most of the improvement came before Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-74657753301995462892013-10-07T10:45:00.000-04:002013-10-07T10:45:08.235-04:00Pop the Champaign for DC CAS Score Gains? Think Again.
DC Council Education Chair David Catania and others have now blown the whistle on the manipulation of cut scores that led to the recently celebrated student achievement gains last year. Elaine Weiss sums it up as a cautionary tale in this Huffington Post column, that we need to take to heart in DC. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-62211277622277896692013-09-24T10:13:00.001-04:002013-09-24T10:13:18.346-04:00The Charter Experiment Is At Best a Mixed Bag: The New Orleans CaseIn this look back at the charter record since Katrina, a feature Newsweek magazine story asks whether this new paradigm in which schools can't keep teachers and is not fun for kids is the best model for the nation's urban poor.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-82984875400509834402013-09-16T18:04:00.001-04:002013-09-16T18:08:42.609-04:00Realities of Race To The Top ImplementationIn 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 analyzed. In exchange for funding that represents on average about 1% of their budgets, states have agreed to policies that will have little effect on achievment gaps, and may do harm. Meanwhile, proven programs that would improve education outcomes for the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-40530371773563251552013-05-29T11:50:00.000-04:002013-05-29T11:54:13.135-04:00How So-called Education Reform Serves to Preserve the Status Quo
Valerie Strauss posted an analysis worth reading by Arthur H. Camins Camins describes how the reform strategies promoted by the US Department of Education and blindly adopted by school districts like that in the District of Columbia actually preserve the structures that cause failure for disadvantaged students while giving the illusion of change. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-36845241482525643372013-01-16T12:05:00.002-05:002013-01-16T12:12:46.937-05:00School Professional Climate Trumps Individual Teacher Characteristics
A report from the new director of the Consortium for Chicago Schools Research says that the collaborative climate in a school is more important than the individual characteristics of teachers. What makes this report so interesting is that DCPS reforms since 2007 are premised on the opposite assumption -- rewarding individual teachers and principals when their students score better than the normUnknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-71834122534952247502013-01-11T10:11:00.000-05:002013-01-11T10:20:15.984-05:00What Are Charter Schools Really For?
The Greater Greater Washington blog's Ken Archer takes Emma Brown's expose of charter school expulsions, and charters' refusal to give students from the neighborhood priority, and follows it to its logical conclusion -- they're not really designed to compete. They're designed to displace neighborhood schools but not serve the same kids.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-43703166845397024562013-01-11T09:44:00.000-05:002013-01-11T09:48:31.059-05:00Students First Ranks States and Ironically Puts Students Last
When Michelle Rhee's "Students First" money raising, privatization advocacy empire released their supposed "ranking of the states" they got a surprising amount of national press, some of it taking the rhetoric of the rankings at face value. However the Opportunity to Learn coalition issued a cogent critique of the Students First report here. The California Superintendent of Schools also cut Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-66712650380073469752012-11-17T11:31:00.000-05:002013-01-11T10:03:10.951-05:00Drifting Toward Two School Systems, Separate and Unequal
Ken Archer of the Greater Greater Washington blog makes the argument that the current proposal by the Chancellor to close 20 schools moves DCPS toward two school systems -- One West of Rock Creek park, with coherent feeder patterns and stable schools; and one for the rest of the city East of the park, with charters that operate by lottery, chaotic openings and closings of schools and poor Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-85957814095671970572012-11-05T17:08:00.000-05:002012-11-05T17:12:10.194-05:00DC's IMPACT contrasted with Montgomery's Proven Approach
The November issue of ASCD's Education Leadership magazine,is devoted entirely to teacher evaluation. An article by Mark Simon compares DC's IMPACT to Montgomery County's collaboratively developed system. The author points out that the philosophical approaches are opposite and the effects on the workforce, teacher turnover, and student achievement are very different.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-80033535162755614282012-10-17T12:05:00.001-04:002012-10-17T12:09:04.791-04:00Growing Movement Against School Closures as a Reform Strategy Emerges in Five CitiesAccording to an article in Ed Week, a growing movement of parents, public school advocates and education researchers who have seen the costs and benefits of closing neighborhood schools is ringing the alarm bell. In Washington DC, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Newark, parents and others are demanding a moratorium on school closings as a strategy for reform.It's not good for the kids Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-6554979357006363912012-09-25T17:23:00.000-04:002012-09-25T17:25:39.048-04:00Wall Street Journal Op-ed by Randi Weingarten and Karen Lewis Monday Offers Insight About What the Chicago Strike Accomplished
Together, Weingarten and Lewis offer one of the most cogent analyses of the meaning of the Chicago strike below. It appeared as an Op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, but in case you don't have a subscription...
By KAREN LEWIS AND RANDI WEINGARTEN
After more than a decade of top-down dictates, disruptive school closures, disregard of teachers' and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-84842321944422869162012-09-18T11:34:00.000-04:002012-09-18T11:39:20.787-04:00What Provoked the Chicago Teachers Strike? Bad Managment Philosophy
Greg Anrig writes in the Pacific Standard magazine that the Chicago teachers strike is at bottom a response by teachers to an outmoded Taylorist "carrot and stick" management approach being pursued by the likes of Rahm Emanuel and Michelle Rhee. Most successful businesses actually no longer use this problematic early 20th century approach but have rather adopted the more progressive "Total Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-34759413808613659792012-09-14T11:10:00.003-04:002012-09-18T11:18:38.920-04:00Huffington Post Column Cuts Through to What the Chicago Teachers Strike is Really About
In the Huffington Post today, BBA Coodinator Elaine Weiss and University of Illinois professor Kevin Kumashiro cut through the general media stupidity and unified opposition to the teachers from the nations political class to describe the real issues of the Chicago teachers strike. The real issue is dueling visions of how best to reform the nation's public schools. The issues are seriousUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-44077093717462213102012-09-12T09:31:00.000-04:002012-09-14T10:16:55.818-04:00Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger Points Out What's At Stake In Chicago Teachers' Strike
From a DC public school parent perspective, what's important about the Chicago teachers strike is that teachers are finally standing up to an education reform agenda that's not good for kids. Washington Post columnist Melinda Henneberger, who writes the "She the People" column, reflects today in her column on what she's heard from her children's teachers here about the effects of the new Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5671820069429263464.post-80846719205156625972012-08-16T09:41:00.001-04:002012-08-16T09:54:21.892-04:00IG "Investigation" Does Not Bring Closure to Testing Scandal
At long last, the DC Inspector General issued his report, the one requested by DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson on whether there was or was not cheating on the 2008-09 DC-CAS standardized tests. His conclusion was that except for the one teacher who admitted to it, there wasn't any. Well...USA Today and the testing company themselves found probable cause that cheating had taken place in 103 Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0