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By Anthony Cody. This week leaders in the California Department of Education released a new system for “grading schools” that proposes to assign schools a set of colored indicators based on a variety of measurements. This system is intended to replace the old system of performance indicators which gave schools …

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A controversy is brewing in California schools. Last year, Governor Brown signed legislation that not only eliminates the state’s high school exit exam, but also retroactively awards diplomas to the 32,000 students who failed to receive them due to not passing the exam. The following post is written by a former …

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By Anthony Cody. This week we have seen a renewed attempt to rehabilitate the beleaguered Common Core standards, just as the scores arrive in many states, largely meeting projections that they would yield increased failure rates and a wider “achievement gap.” These results are the most basic problem that the …

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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. Education blogger Alexander Russo has offered an analysis of recent education journalism in a piece entitled “Common problems with Common Core reporting.” Russo hosts a blog called This Week in Education, sponsored by Scholastic corporation. Russo reached out to me for input as he was …

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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 David Spring. The corporate press likes to say that Common Core and the Common Core-aligned Smarter Balance Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test were adopted in Washington state in 2010 or 2011. This might cause one to believe that Common Core and SBAC were adopted a long time ago. In fact, the Common Core was …