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Tuesday, November 20, 2012

MORNING UPDATE: LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 11-20-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

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Credit-Rating Agency: Charter Schools Are Risky Investment

Well, we are into big-time business talk about education.
For-profit colleges are losing market share.
K12 Inc.’s stock price drops after Wells Fargo downgraded its rating in response to the poor performance of K12′s Colorado Virtual Academy, where the graduation rate is 22 percent.
Now a rating agency finds that despite the passage of an ALEC-style amendment in Georgia, allowing a 


Democracy for Sale?

Somebody is dumping a lot of campaign cash into state and local races.
Michael Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute is convinced that the teachers’ unions are the Evil Empire. He says that the unions play Goliath to the poor reformers’ puny David. He says the unions were responsible for the defeat of right-wing Education Idol Tony Bennett in Indiana and the decisive repeal of the Luna Laws in deep-red Idaho.
Wow, who knew the teachers’ unions were so strong in those two red states?
I will wait to hear from readers in those two states about whether their unions are so


Students Who Disgrace Themselves in Public

Students for Education Reform at New York University and Columbia University plan a march to demand that the New York City United Federation of Teachers and the Bloomberg administration reach an agreement on test-based teacher evaluation. These groups are off-shoots of Democrats for Education Reform, the group founded by Wall Street hedge fund managers, the guys with annual incomes in the multiple millions, most of whom went to elite private schools.
The members of SFER pay more in tuition each year than a typical teacher’s annual income. They are students at elite universities. They obviously do not know that testing experts have found the evaluation system called “value-added assessment” to be inaccurate and unstable.
Why are they pushing teachers to accept an invalid measure? Why are these students, many of whom went to 


Why Cheat When You Are Winning?

Newark’s Robert Treat Academy is under investigation for possible cheating on state tests.
This charter school has been highly praised by the media and politicians as “proof” that “poverty is not destiny.”
As Jersey Jazzman points out, and asBruce Baker has documented, the school stacks the deck by taking very small numbers of students with special needs, small proportions of English language learners, and smaller


EduShyster on the Michigan Plan to End Public Education As We Know It

Just to show that great minds think alike, here is EduShyster’s description of the Michigan plan to end public education as we know it.
The plan was designed by the deep thinkers at the free-market think tank called the Mackinac Center.
She calls it a reform “turducken,” which is one reform wrapped inside another, all of them together accomplishing 


For-Profit Colleges in Trouble

No tears from this corner for the for-profit sector in higher education.
It is losing market share and closing campuses as students figure out that the degree from a for-profit college is not entirely respectable.
John Hechinger again proves he is at the top of his game as an education writer.
He knows how to follow the money.
Remember the old days when

Michigan Plan to Dissolve School Districts

As readers of this blog know, Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan is determined to break up public education and encourage privatization as rapidly as possible.
He has been relying on a group called the “Oxford Foundation” to devise his plans. As we now know is customary among corporate reformers, the group is named deceptively. it has nothing to do with Oxford and it is not a foundation. while the website has a section about “transparency,” the website contains no names.
Transparency is for the little people.
This article in the Detroit Free Press identifies the leader of the “Oxford Foundation.” He is Richard McLellan, a 


The Real Story Behind the Bridgeport Election

The recent election in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was a major setback for corporate-style “reform” in that city.
The mayor launched a well-funded campaign to persuade voters to give up their democratic right to elect their school board and to give him control of the public schools.
Miraculously, despite his huge advantage in money and power, the mayor lost. The voters said no. Democracy 

That Teeny Tiny Number of Irreplaceables

Bruce Baker is one of my favorite bloggers. He is smart and irreverent. He is not awed by big names. He actually was a teacher before becoming a researcher. He has the technical skill to crack the statistical analyses that others generate to make spurious claims. Unlike many with the same skill set, he is willing to call a phony a phony. You might say he is our Premier C.D. (Since I have taken a personal pledge not to use vulgarisms on this blog, I will give you a clue to help you figure out what a C.D. is; it is a Cr-p Detector).
In this post, Bruce shows what nonsense The New Teacher Project report “The Irreplaceables” is.
TNTP, you may recall, was founded by either TFA or Michelle Rhee, depending on whom you heard from last. Its purpose was to stock urban districts with shiny new teachers (like TFA) to replace those burned-out veterans with low expectations. Although TNTP is an advocacy group that seeks and wins contracts from urban districts, 


Diane in the Evening 11-19-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 5 hours ago
Diane Ravitch's blog: Help This Small Community By Signing Its Petition by dianerav The town of Scottsburg, Indiana, has fewer than 10,000 residents. There is a proposal before the City Council to open a charter school. This will split the town. Some public school parents have started a petition to ask the City Council and the Mayor not to open a charter Why Local School Boards Are Targeted for Destruction by dianerav A local school board in Florida rejected the application of a for-profit charter operator. The board said they had had a bad experience with the last charter scho... more »