Latest News and Comment from Education

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Diane in the Evening 4-13-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all:






Teacher Ken Shows Creativity

Please check out Teacher Ken’s post on the Daily Kos.
Scroll down through the comments and you will see some creative reworking of the covers of Time and Newsweek, as well as the “Waiting for Superman” poster, now renamed “Waiting for Eraserhead.”


Jersey Youth Will Run NYC School System

Dennis Walcott, the chancellor of the Néw York City Department of Education, has announced the selection of Andrew Buher, age 27, to be Chief Operating Officer of the 1.1 million student school system.
Buher graduated from college in 2007. He came to wirk for the DOE in 2010. He started at $75,000 but soon 

Daily Howler on “Cherry-Pick Hall of Fame”

The Daily Howler has a few choice words for today’s opinion piece about how to reform teaching, by a Harvard professor.
The writer of the Daily Howler happens to be a former teacher and cares a lot about education.
Today he begins to dissect the NY Times article that I described as one of the dum

One of the Dumbest NY Times’ Opinion Pieces Ever

Today, the New York Times gave a lot of column inches to an article by a Harvard professor who claims to know how to fix the teaching profession.
He begins with the assertion that despite the many reforms of the past 30 years, the performance of our K-12 education system “remains stubbornly mediocre.”
His “evidence” is the test scores on the 2009 PISA in which the US scored about average.
Wouldn’t you expect a Harvard professor to check out the socioeconomic breakdown of the PISA scores which


Why the Tennessee Bill to Punish Welfare Families for Low Test Scores Was Wrong

Kay McSpadden writes frequently about education issues in North Carolina. Here she explains why the Tennessee bill to cut welfare benefits to families if their children didn’t get high test scores was a disaster. Fortunately, key Republican legislators put a halt to it and it never came to a vote.
I try not to read comments on blogs, other than this one, where I read them all.
But I couldn’t help read the ones that followed Kay’s compassionate post and was appalled by several, 

A Reformer’s Dilemma

EduShyster ponders the plight of a reformer trying to figure how to pay for an elite private school.
What to do?
The tuition is just the beginning.
All those fancy clothes and vacations and SAT prep.
Could she use an Opportunity Scholarship?
Not likely. The school won’t take them.
She how she solves her problem.

LISTEN TO DIANE RAVITCH 4-13-13 Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all

coopmike48 at Big Education Ape - 1 hour ago
Diane Ravitch's blog | A site to discuss better education for all: [image: Click on picture to Listen to Diane Ravitch] This Rhee Scandal Can’t Be Silenced with Spin by dianerav John Merrow’s bombshell investigation of cheating in DC is seeping into the mainstream media. There is no way that polished statements and well-honed rhetoric will stop the suspicions and speculation. It’s time for a thorough and professional investigation. Here is a blogger for Esquire magazine, who goes to the heart of the matter. What did Rhee know and when did she know it and what did she do in resp... more »