By John Thompson. The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof, in “Bill and Melinda Gates’s Pillow Talk,” writes: “It has been 15 years since Bill and Melinda Gates created what is now the largest foundation in the world. This milestone seemed the right moment to ask them what they have …
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 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 Anthony Cody. It is a bit hard to recall where we were five years ago, but this re-post might help jog your memory, as it did mine. At the time, my blog had been running for a little less than two years at Education Week, and I had started a project called “Teachers Letters to Obama.” Here is what I …
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 …
Teacher Jim Owens was chosen by the 435 graduating seniors at Gainesville High School to address them and their families, and delivered this speech to an audience of 5,000 on June 5, 2011. I originally shared this talk back then, and I think it is still relevant now. Testing. Testing 1,2. Just like school, no? …
(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 …
By John Thompson. The Education Post is a school reform site that claims to seek a “better conversation, better education.” It supposedly wants to elevate the voices of teachers and others as an antidote to the “politicized debate that pushes people to the extremes.” However, many or …
By Monty Neill and Lisa Guisbond. The draft rewrite of No Child Left Behind that the Senate education committee will debate on April 14 – “Every Child Achieves” (link here) – fails to reduce the law’s deeply destructive annual testing mandate. It keeps the requirement to test every child in every year …
“It always seems impossible until it is done.” ~Nelson Mandela By Deb Escobar, Lorri Gumanow, Lisa Kollmer, and Lily Alayne Owen. Refuse the Test Robocall Committee: Katherine Brezler, Deb Escobar, Lorri Gumanow, Lisa Kollmer, and Lily Alayne Owen, along with several other education activists, parents, and …
