The following is the full statement delivered to the Renton School Board on Wednesday, Jan. 28, by David Spring, in conjunction with presentations by four Renton teachers who delivered statements of professional conscience, declaring their unwillingness to administer standardized tests this spring (more details …
By Anthony Cody and Susan DuFresne. Four Seattle area teachers who got to know one another in 2011, when they all attended the Save Our Schools march in Washington, DC, stood before the Renton Board of Education and read “statements of professional conscience” in which they pledged their refusal to …
By Anthony Cody. Last Saturday I shared the dramatic story of how a group of parents and teachers convinced the Democratic Party Committee of the State of Washington to vote in favor of a strong statement rejecting the Common Core standards. Perhaps there could be no better issue to compare and contrast mainstream …
By Susan DuFresne. What will happen to us as teachers, parents, students, and democracy as we continue to struggle in our mandated race to the top of corporate education reform? Home for winter break from my work as a teacher, I find myself too exhausted the first several days to take care of anyone but myself. …
By Anthony Cody. Towards the end of his press conference today, President Obama was asked about the state of African Americans and race relations in the country. Part of his answer related to education. He stated: We’ve seen some progress, in the education reforms that we’ve initiated are showing …
By Ed Kitlowski. This August began the commemorations of events of World War One. It also was the adoption of the Common Core Standards (CCS) in many states. One aspect of the CCS is to make connections between two ideas, events, literature or artworks. There is an expression that a person should study history so …
By Anthony Cody. There is growing evidence that the corporate-sponsored education reform project is on its last legs. The crazy patchwork of half-assed solutions on offer for the past decade have one by one failed to deliver, and one by one they are falling. Can the edifice survive once its pillars of support have …
By Anthony Cody. When the history of modern education reform is written one of the most shameful chapters will be the continued embrace of various forms of “Value Added Models” for purposes of measuring the effectiveness of teachers in raising test scores. This month, the Department of Education is asking for …
By Anthony Cody. Friday, a column in the New York Times cited research in genetic markers associated with resilience to advance what I believe would lead to the practice of Eugenics in our schools. Eugenics was quite popular in the 1920s. The basic idea was that society would benefit by encouraging reproduction …
By Anthony Cody. New York principal Carol Burris’ latest post is infuriating. In it, she describes the inaccurate data that the New York state Department of Education has published which fails to show the true number of students attending college. The Department of Ed published the faulty data by district …
