There are occasions when I think that if standardized tests were allowed to make up only a very small component of a teacher’s evaluation, they wouldn’t be so bad. Usually those occasions last only briefly. On the surface, incorporating current standardized tests into teacher and school evaluation may seem rational (depending on your perspective). But […]

The following was cross-posted on my education blog, An Urban Teacher’s Education. This year, like in many previous years, Washington State voters will again have the opportunity to vote for or against legalizing charter schools in our state. Initiative 1240 would allow non-profit (for-profit charter managers would not be permitted) to open eight charter schools […]

This is what one perspective TFA corps member Googled on the way to my blog. Isn’t that nice to know.

As I heard Tim say about a hundred times during a weekend in DC, the misuse of high-stakes test scores is a hill to die on. We simply can’t accept the way corporate reform wants to use them. The post below is one of six I wrote about a year ago on the use and […]

Attending the SOS conference this past weekend got me thinking about the roots of the debate over public education once again. I often think that there is an inherent difference between the way many of us think about the way we should organize ourselves that is not being dealt with. I think it has to […]

A fabulous technology educator from North Carolina named Dov Rosenberg (@dov_rosenberg) recently made it into Valerie Strauss’s blog at the Washington Post. There, he lists ten things corporate reformers often say about school reform that just aren’t true. Although Rosenberg originally titled it, “10 Most Damaging Ed Reform Lies,” Strauss made it a little less […]

Have you ever heard of Colocation? No? Well, it’s when a charter school is granted the opportunity to move in with a traditional public school. Instead of one school using a building (or part of a building), two schools use it. See the blog below to learn about what that looks and feels like in […]

On Sunday I posted my review of Kathleen Nolan’s book, Police in the Hallways, at my personal blog, An Urban Teacher’s Education (this post is also cross-posted there). Originally, I had intended for the post to be much longer, but as I reread it, I realized much of what I’d included was less about the book and more […]

Today @garyrubinstein tweeted a blog post written by a soon to be TFA teacher in Oklahoma about how disappointed s/he is to discover s/he’ll be teaching in a charter school rather than a traditional public school, where s/he assumes all the teachers must be old, jaded, and apathetic. S/he’s afraid s/he won’t be able to make […]

Rachel Levy made some excellent points on her blog yesterday in a post entitled, “So You Think You Can Be an Entrepreneur?” The main idea is that corporate reformers’ attempts to impose business practices, business ideology, and even business language on public education is rather silly, and, more importantly, harmful. Rachel’s focus was on the […]