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Monday, December 3, 2012

Diane in the Evening 12-3-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

Diane Ravitch's blog:






Mrs. Cook: Teacher of the Year, “Unsatisfactory”

I published a post with a photo of a teacher who was named Teacher of the Year by her colleagues but found “unsatisfactory” or “ineffective” by the value-added methods of her state. I knew her name–Mrs. Cook–but nothing more.


How to Speak Out Against Race to the Top

Parents and teachers have organized a telephone campaign to register their objections to the Race to the Top program, which has led to more testing and more school closings and more disruptions for students and teachers.
Here is the campaign message:
Contact the White House weekly at 202-456-1111  
Message: Give all students the same education your girls are getting! Abandon Race to the Top and stop privatizing public schools.
MONDAY
1. Alabama
2. Alaska
3. Arizona
4. Arkansas
5. California
6. Colorado
7. Connecticut
8. Delaware
9. Florida
10. Georgia 
TUESDAY
1. Hawaii
2. Idaho
3. Illinois
4. Indiana
5. Iowa
6. Kansas
7. Kentucky
8. Louisiana
9. Maine
10. Maryland 
WEDNESDAY
1. Massachusetts
2. Michigan
3. Minnesota
4. Mississippi
5. Missouri
6. Montana
7. Nebraska
8. Nevada
9. New Hampshire
10. New Jersey 
THURSDAY
1. New Mexico
2. New York
3. North Carolina
4. North Dakota
5. Ohio
6. Oklahoma
7. Oregon
8. Pennsylvania
9. Rhode Island
10. South Carolina 
FRIDAY
1. South Dakota
2. Tennessee
3. Texas
4. Utah
5. Vermont
6. Virginia
7. Washington
8. West Virginia
9. Wisconsin
10. Wyoming
11. Washington, D.C.
What is “Race to the Top”? 
RttT is an initiative from the Obama administration that allows states to extend the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate that ALL children be working at grade level by the 2014. States that accepted RttT agreed (along with many other things) to evaluate teachers using student test scores as part of the evaluation and provide more charter schools as a parent “choice”. Just these two provisions have resulted in high stakes testing impacting America’s children and tax dollars being removed from traditional public schools to fund charter schools. A “not so coincidental” byproduct of just these two actions is a decline in the quality of education in our public schools AND corporations lining up to write tests, new curriculum, and open charter schools. If continued, RttT will ultimately destroy public schools as we now know them and continue to provide a way for the monies designated for public education to go to the accounts of corporations that are joining the education bandwagon. Not all children are accepted at charter schools. Education will become a commodity for a select few children and the rest others will be “trained” to be docile employees (google Common Core Standards for more info). Parents must speak out now! Teachers and administrators must speak out now! America must speak out now! STOP THE RACE TO THE TOP!


LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 12-3-12 Diane Ravitch's blog

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 2 hours ago
Diane Ravitch's blog: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] Pedro Noguera Explains the Demise of Newark’s Global Village by dianerav Pedro Noguera, an urban sociologist at New York University, took the lead in crafting a comprehensive plan for education reform in a group of public schools in Newark’s central ward. Modeled on the Harlem Children’s Zone, the Global Village Zone was heralded as thoughtful and bold when it was introduced in 2010. But things went wrong, and Global Village did not survive. I invited Pedro Noguera to describe what happened. He generously ... more »