Education Links

"This essay briefly traces the history of testing in public schools from its beginnings in the 1920s, through the counter-productive No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal law, to passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015. It then discusses the recent and rapid emergence of the testing resistance and reform movement."

"NPE is proud to share this interactive infographic detailing the last 15 years of Bill Gates's public education experiments. It contains links to 13 reports from 12 of the nation's leading pro-public education advocates (which you will also find in the "Around the States" entries below.) Hover your cursor over the green, yellow, and red entries to reveal links to the reports. You'll also find a video of Gates embedded in the center quote. Please share widely to let others know the full extent of the destructive influence Bill and Melinda Gates have had, and continue to have, on the democratic institution of public education."

"In this research note, we estimate a series of models using publicly available school level data to address the following question: Q: Did students in Newark (combined district and charter) make gains on statewide averages (non-Newark) on state assessments, controlling for demographics? Specifically, we evaluate changes in mean scale scores on state assessments (NJASK) for language arts and math grades 6 to 8."

"Why would Moskowitz feel the need to lay down a gauntlet in opposition to a president and two secretaries of education who have all been vigorous charter school supporters? For that matter, why take on the entire civil rights community? To answer these questions, I decided to take a look at the data on suspensions from New York City schools, both public and charter."

"As the title of this post says, there are three things you must read if you want to understand the origins of Common Core."

"Research shows that in Pennsylvania's public schools skin color, not economics, determines how much money districts get."

"A dominant narrative of the past decade and a half of education reform has been to highlight alleged persistent failures of our education system.  While this tale began long ago with the Reagan Administration report A Nation at Risk, it has been put into overdrive in the era of test based accountability that began with the No Child Left Behind Act.  That series of amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act mandated annual standardized testing of all students in grades 3-8 and once in high school, set a target for 100% proficiency for all students in English and mathematics, and imposed consequences for schools and districts that either failed to reach proficiency targets or failed to test all students.  Under the Obama administration, the federal Department of Education has freed states from the most stringent requirements to meet those targets, but in return, states had to commit themselves to specific reforms such as the adoption of common standards, the use of standardized test data in the evaluation of teachers, and the expansion of charter schools.  All of these reforms are predicated on the constantly repeated belief that our citizens at all levels are falling behind international competitors, that our future workforce lacks the skills they will need in the 21st century, and that we have paid insufficient attention to the uneven distribution of equal opportunity in our nation. But what if we've gotten the entire thing wrong the whole time?"

"Today several important civil rights organizations released a statement that is critical of the decision by many parents and students to opt out of high stakes standardized tests. Though we understand the concerns expressed in this statement, we believe high stakes tests are doing more harm than good to the interests of students of color, and for that reason, we respectfully disagree."

"How Due Process Protects Teachers and Students"

"Reducing everything-including people-to markets makes democracy impossible, UC Berkeley's Wendy Brown tells Salon"

"The charter movement turns 25 next year, but whether it's fulfilling the mission early advocates had envisioned is far from clear."

"In short, the decline of state school finance systems continues and the rhetoric opposing substantive school finance reform shows little sign of easing. Districts serving the neediest student populations continue to take the hardest hit. Yet, concurrently, many states are substantively raising outcome standards for students and increasing the consequences on schools and teachers for not achieving those outcome standards. "

"The ballooning demand for misplaced and misunderstood metrics, benchmarks, and performance indicators is costing us big."

"Privatisation of education has a devastating impact, aggravating inequality, so why does the development community fund profit-seeking providers?"

"As I've pointed out over, and over and over again on this blog, NY State maintains one of the least equitable educational systems in the nation."

"The civil rights groups apparently are unaware if the history of standardized testing, and its ties to the eugenics movement. I wrote about that in chapter 4 of "Left Back." Historically, standardized tests were used to deny educational opportunities to under served groups and to re-enforce theories of white supremacy, based on test scores. Like school choice, standardized testing was a weapon used by racists to deny civil rights, not a force for civil rights."

"It also, however, means that roughly one in three SA teachers (32.8 percent) either switched to a different (non-SA) school, in NYC or elsewhere, or exited the teaching profession entirely. This is almost twice the rate of 17 percent provided by SA officials to the New York Times reporter."