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By Anthony Cody. A high stakes experiment in educational collaboration is unfolding in the state of California, and I have a feeling of foreboding. I am afraid teachers and students in my state are like frogs in a pot that is slowly heating, and before we know it we will be cooked. Though State Superintendent Tom …

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By Anthony Cody. A new documentary will be released in community-based screenings across the country on August 14th. This film could provide a powerful boost to local efforts to organize resistance to the corporate takeover of public schools. It is called Education Inc, and it tells the tale all too familiar to …

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The latest interview with Bill Gates on CNBC has the world’s richest man discussing education with little evidence that he has learned much over the past six years. Is he paying attention? In a bubble? What the heck is going on? As readers of this blog know, I have been attending to the words and deeds of Bill …

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By Anthony Cody. This coming week I will be back in Seattle, a few months shy of the third anniversary of my first visit to the Gates Foundation. I will give a talk at the University of Washington, introduced by Jesse Hagopian and several Teachers of Conscience from the area, who have refused to give high stakes …

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By Anthony Cody.  One of Hillary Clinton’s first campaign appearances was this week at Kirkwood Community College in Monticello, Iowa. There was a roundtable of hand picked questioners, one of whom lobbed this softball: (minute 50 on this C-SPAN video). Diane: I think we are very blessed to live where we do. …

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(This post is part of a series related to the VIVA/NEA 360° Report. See an overview here.) By Rachel Rich. I felt like I had won the Teachers’ Schoolhouse Sweepstakes as I opened an invitation to an NEA survey on “360 Degree Accountability”. How often do teachers get asked for an opinion?! I was equally …

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By Anthony Cody.  We all remember the game of musical chairs. At a children’s party, the adults count the number of children, and put chairs in a circle, with one fewer chair than children. The children circle the chairs as the music plays, and when the music stops, everyone tries to get a seat. In each round, …

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By Joseph Ray Lavine. A co-founder of the Network for Public Education addressed the ineffectiveness of current U.S. standardized testing and teacher evaluation standards in a speech at the University Chapel, at the University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia, last Wednesday. Anthony Cody, who also writes the …

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By Anthony Cody. We are getting decidedly mixed signals from the Gates Foundation these days. From Bill Gates himself, we get a sense of frustration that education has not welcomed his central thesis that the “tools of science” — namely common standards and high stakes tests aligned to them, …