By Denny Taylor. I have read with interest the dialogue between Marc Tucker, Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, and Yong Zhao on the establishment of an American test-based public education accountability system. Forty years of research on the impact of political structures on social systems,[1], [2] in particular …
A Response to Marc Tucker’s Response to Diane Ravitch and Anthony Cody on Fixing Our National Accountability System By Yong Zhao. I was very impressed with Marc Tucker’s indictment of the test-based accountability system that has been in place for over a decade: The test-based accountability system now …
By Anthony Cody. For progress to occur in China – or the US, the dragons of educational authoritarianism must be slain. Chinese-American professor Yong Zhao has been a bit of a contrarian regarding education reform in the United States. He comes at the subject with a unique perspective. He experienced the …
By Larry Graykin. My son Alec, a junior at Concord (NH) High School, shared a fascinating tidbit with me recently. His school has shifted to a new way of grading. Homework’s value in this new system? 0%. That’s not to say that the school has abolished homework. On the contrary; he has as much or more assigned …
By Chris Thinnes. We seem to have forgotten there could be any other way to hold ourselves accountable. – Steve Seidel ‘WE MIGHT WELL HAVE VIEWED IT AS AN ACT OF WAR’ I remember Sir Ken Robinson recounting, a few years ago, the challenges of his family’s adjustment to American culture when they moved …
By Stephen Krashen Bill Nye (“The Science Guy”) is enthusiastic about the Common Core because he feels that there are some basic principles that students simply need to know: Everybody needs to learn “a little bit of physics, chemistry, mathematics and you got to learn some evolution. …
By Anthony Cody. In August, Louisiana teacher and investigative reporter Mercedes Schneider wrote about the dangers of having education journalism directly funded by the Gates Foundation. This morning, she followed up that post with another, pointing out that while it sounds benign to “focus on success,” this …
By Denisha Jones. As many parents prepare to send their child(ren) off to school this year they are hopeful that their children will return home each day with reports that they learned something new or made a new friend. Unfortunately for many parents their children will come home and report that they spent the …
By Anthony Cody. A new report from Marc Tucker is gaining some support for its supposedly new approach to holding schools accountable. But I am afraid his plan makes many of the mistakes that previous such systems have made. Here is the core of his proposal: Instead of testing all of our students every year with …
by Michelle Gunderson. Imagine you are 8 years old. Your parents respectfully requested that you not participate in standardized testing. Yet, your school system insists on putting the test in front of you, reading the directions, and making you sit quietly for the duration of the test. Now that over a thousand …
