If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
We need to stop lumping black and Hispanic students together -- both in terms of how we measure progress and in terms of policy. The groups have different educational needs.
The truth is, while there are indeed some quality programs in the sector, there are many, many rotten apples, because the lack of strong accountability standards has created a race to the bottom -- the more you abuse students, the more money you make.
The Harrison reforms started with superintendent Mike Miles asking a question: If 80 percent of my budget is devoted to salaries, shouldn't salaries be linked to performance? Sounds logical, but in the school world, that's radical thinking.
In the face of this disheartening news, one has to ask, "who benefits?" I'm stumped. Certainly not children, parents and teachers.
In the education reform conversation, we have heard from educators, parents, administrators, and policymakers, but we are missing the most authentic, indispensable voice -- the student.
Given these discouraging statistics, it comes as no surprise that teacher satisfaction is at a 20-year low. Nearly a third of teachers said they are likely to leave the profession. No other industry would stand for this massive brain drain.
The rich and powerful have lined up firmly on the side of school reform, which is defined as a system where teachers lack job security and standardized testing becomes all-important.
None of us would want to have our job performance judged on an outcome that we don't really control. But that's where teachers now find themselves.
I refuse to believe that America is in a state of decline; however, if we do not make real strides towards better educating our students, then that is the reality we face.
President Obama, who I support, has encouraged even more primitive, bubble-in educational malpractice than President Bush did. But, in his State of th...
Because evaluating teachers using student achievement scores is here to stay, it's in teachers' interests to argue for better measures of achievement. We need better ways of assessing the value that teachers add to the lives of the children they teach, beyond test scores.
I recently posted The Best (and Worst) Education News of 2011, and thought I'd take a stab at some prognostication for 2012.
I believe that the future emphasis in any effective school reform movement should be to improve the living conditions of the low-achieving students in order to give them the opportunity to become high-achievers.
One of the best ways to see what is happening in education is with documentaries and videos and one of the best creators of these documentaries is outstanding education reporter John Merrow on Learning Matters.
In education, changes in outcomes, such as graduation rates and college remediation rates, take years to show improvements. Closer to the ground, there is reason for hope.
Michigan Senate Republicans want to tighten the rules so that a legislator's votes cannot be grounds for recall, as was the case with recalled legislator Paul Scott.
