Latest News and Comment from Education

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

7-1-14 Curmudgucation

CURMUDGUCATION:







Duncan on Harris v. Quinn
"Collective bargaining is a fundamental right that helped build America’s middle class. I’ve seen firsthand as Education Secretary that collaborating with unions and their state and local affiliates helps improve outcomes for students. The President and I remain committed to defending collective bargaining rights."That's not an excerpt. That's the whole thing. Here's the complete Duncan

Charter Party of the Year: The Tweet Report
I believe that charter schools were once a viable option, a way to diversify and expand the possibilities available within a public school system. That possibility has all-but-vanished, crushed under the transformation of charter schools from an educational offering into an investment opportunity (thank you, obscure tax law). Nothing quite underlines that transformation like the annual National Ch

Brown Presents NY Lawsuit Talking Points
In the June 24 NY Daily News, Campbell Brown presented the basic talking points for the newly-manufactured NY road show version of the Vergara trial. Here we go.A Stirring AnecdoteHer story centers on the Williams familyOne of their children... felt so strongly about the lack of instruction she was getting at her Rochester school that she wrote an essay about her experience. Instead of getting hel


6-30-14 Curmudgucation
CURMUDGUCATION: The Mystery of ExcellenceDiane Ravitch's recent columns about Ms. McLaughlin, one of the undeservingly employed terrible teachers of the Vergara trial, underlines one of the central problems of the whole teacher evaluation portion of the reformster dream.Ms. McLaughlin won awards for teaching excellence not once, but twice in her career. And yet one of the plaintiffs found her to b