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Friday, November 22, 2013

UPDATE: Racing to the top? Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Chicago Tonight's panel of "experts". No teachers allowed.

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Chicago Tonight's panel of "experts". No teachers allowed.:



Racing to the top?
Arne Duncan, as usual is sticking to his misfiring guns but criticism is mounting over his $5 billion in Race To The Top grants showing no real measurable improvement in schools. No surprise there since the whole strategy was flawed from the get go. The money was used to drive massive school closures in minority communities, the unfettered expansion of privately managed charter schools, standardiz

Chicago Tonight's panel of "experts". No teachers allowed.

Just watched Chicago Tonight show on dropout prevention. Shouldn't have eaten first.

The panel, which included CPS' new accountability chief John Barker, must have set the world record for empty, meaningless cliches abut Common Core and data-driven this andnew metrics that. Barker was aided in elevating data about freshman-on-track above any and all other issues, by Elaine Allensworth from the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Accountability Chief Barker
The panel was sailing right along on Phil Ponce'ssoft-ball questions until a few people in the audience began raising issues of poverty, violence and other outside of school crises. The panel then turned into a gaggle of hand-wringing, head-nodding sympathizers of the poor with nothing responsive to add to the