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 …
By Amanda Koonlaba. In May, I participated in the Center for Teaching Quality’s #TeachingIs campaign by writing a guest post for Deidra Gammill’s Designing Teachers blog on the CTQ Collaboratory. My post was titled, #TeachingIs Not About Me. I wrote about how teaching is about service and kindness. I talked …
By John Thompson. Teachers have other things to do rather than criticize reforms that help students. For instance, we welcome the extra counselors who helped raise graduation rates across the nation. Educators oppose the hastily implemented silver bullets that have backfired, damaged public schools, undermined our …
By Bond Collard. High-stakes standardized tests are a fact of life in the American education system. The tests were widely adopted through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, passed under President George W. Bush. Standardized testing in schools was supposed to provide a metric for how well children were …
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 …
By John Thompson. Hopefully, a new quasi-experimental study, The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children, by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz will influence the domestic policy of Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration. Hopefully, Hillary will understand that this new …
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 …
By John Thompson. When lost in the woods, the first rule is “hug a tree.” In other words, slow down, confront your fears, regain your calm and think prudently about getting back on track. When trapped in the urban crises of today, we should first hug each other, converse with each other, and then hug the …
By Anthony Cody. Poor John Oliver. After he did a segment on the insanity of our nation’s testing machine, the field of education’s only multi-million dollar blog, The Education Post, has taken after him with a vengeance. Oliver joins others with the nerve to question the nation’s obsession with standardized …
By John Thompson. Chris Barbic, the Superintendent of the Tennessee Achievement School District (ASD), is back in the news, and he is displaying remarkable candor in describing his assumptions. Barbic also explains how he remains devoted to his “hypothesis” on school improvement. Coverage of Barbic’s …
