By John Thompson. Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase (1965) is the teachers’ and students’ Catch-22 (1961). She captures the fecklessness of bureaucracies, especially those damaged by a culture of powerlessness. She also illuminates the best single antidote to the situational ethics that …
By Anthony Cody. The post I wrote a month ago, critiquing Marc Tucker’s “new accountability system” has opened up a long overdue discussion of the economic foundations and goals of 21st century education reform. In his two responses, to myself and Diane Ravitch, and to Yong Zhao, Tucker has chosen to only …
By Paul Horton. An important new study, The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood by Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle, and Linda Olson, casts doubt on the current policy push to starve neighborhood public schools and fund charter schools that are not connected to …
By Paula Noonan. The Rebels — students from Columbine High School — headed to adjacent Clement Park at 10:30am yesterday to protest the Jefferson County (Jeffco), Colorado, school board’s anti-Advanced Placement/US History resolution. The Rebels, the George Washington kind from the American …
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 …
By Paula Noonan. Both the last straw and the straw that broke the camel’s back dropped onto Jefferson County Schools on the night of September 18 at the Jefferson County Schools Board Meeting. The next morning 50 Jefferson County teachers, unable to carry any straws anymore, called in sick or took personal …
By Anthony Cody. A New Mexico mother of four has been targeted by conservative political leaders unhappy with her education activism on Facebook and in her community. Kathy Korte serves on the Albuquerque school board, and is active in a grassroots organization called Stand4KidsNM, which has an active Facebook …
By Becky Pringle, Vice President, National Education Association. It has been three years since Governor Tom Corbett cut millions of dollars from York City public schools, creating a funding crisis that is still being felt in the city’s schools today. David Meckley, Corbett’s hand-picked ‘chief …
succssBy John Thompson. The old test-driven, accountability-driven school reform movement is overextended, cut off, and heading for a catastrophic defeat – and they know it. That is why some of its most zealous crusaders are doubling down on anti-teacher legal campaigns. This is the accountability hawks’ last …
By Michelle Gunderson. My friend who is a janitor in the Chicago Public Schools told me that he warned his daughters to only use the bathrooms at school if they have to. He said, “I know how impossible it is to get our schools clean right now. It just can’t be done with the cutbacks.” Can you imagine telling …
