2012

Education and the Income Gap

April 28, 2012 - Linda Darling-H...

by Linda Darling Hammond

There is much handwringing about low educational attainment in the United States these days. We hear constantly about U.S. rankings on assessments like the international PISA tests: The United States was 14th in reading, 21st in science, 25th in math in 2009, for example. We hear about how young children in high-poverty areas are entering kindergarten unprepared and far behind many of their classmates. Middle school students from low-income families are scoring, on average, far below the proficient levels that would enable them to graduate high school, go to college, and get good jobs. Fewer than half of high school students manage to graduate from some urban schools. And too many poor and minority students who do go on to college require substantial remediation and drop out before gaining a degree.

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing

April 24, 2012 - George Wood

This resolution is modeled on the resolution passed by more than 360 Texas school boards as of April 23, 2012. It was written by the Advancement Project, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, FairTest, the Forum for Education and Democracy, MecklenburgACTS, Deborah Meier, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., National Education Association, New York Performance Standards Consortium, Tracy Novick, Parents Across America, Parents United for Responsible Education-Chicago, Diane Ravitch, Race to Nowhere, Time Out From Testing, and the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries.

Sign the resolution as an organization or as an individual at: timeoutfromtesting.org/national resolution/

What U.S. Can't Learn From Finland

April 23, 2012 - Chris Stephens

by Pasi Sahlberg

The Pattern on the Rug: The Toll of School Reform

March 28, 2012 - Anonymous

by Diane Ravitch

(Education Week's "Bridging Differences" blog, March 27, 2012)

There comes a times when you look at the rug on the floor, the one you've seen many times, and you see a pattern that you had never noticed before. You may have seen this squiggle or that flower, but you did not see the pattern into which the squiggles and flowers and trails of ivy combined.

In American education, we can now discern the pattern on the rug.

Consider the budget cuts to schools in the past four years. From the budget cuts come layoffs, rising class sizes, less time for the arts and physical education, less time for history, civics, foreign languages, and other non-tested subjects. Add on the mandates of No Child Left Behind, which demands 100 percent proficiency in math and reading and stigmatizes more than half the public schools in the nation as "failing" for not reaching an unattainable goal.

Maybe It's Time to Ask The Teachers

March 22, 2012 - Linda Darling-H...

by Linda Darling-Hammond

(The Huffington Post, March 20, 2012)

American teachers deal with a lot: low pay, growing class sizes and escalating teacher-bashing from politicians and pundits. Federal testing and accountability mandates under No Child Left Behind and, more recently, Race to the Top, have added layers of bureaucracy while eliminating much of the creativity and authentic learning that makes teaching enjoyable. Tack on the recession's massive teacher layoffs and other school cuts, plus the challenges of trying to compensate for increasing child poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity, and you get a trifecta of disincentives to become, or remain, a teacher.

High-Stakes Tests Bad for Learning, Studies Show

March 13, 2012 - Chris Stephens

by Carolyn J. Heinrich

(The American-Statesman, Austin, Texas, March 10, 2012)

Standardized achievement tests have long been a routine part of our efforts to measure the educational progress of students. In the distant past, testing days came and went with little notice or fanfare for students, parents and teachers alike. And in those days and times, the tests probably provided fairly accurate assessments of students' progress in learning from one year to the next.

But those days of relatively relaxed test-taking for students and limited stakes for school districts and teachers are long gone. Test-based accountability systems that attach weighty consequences to student test results for school district staff, teachers, students and public officials are becoming increasingly institutionalized in the education system. There are probably few other places where the stakes attached to these tests are as high as they are in Texas.

Value-Added Evaluation Hurts Teaching

March 5, 2012 - Linda Darling-H...

By Linda Darling-Hammond

(Education Week, March 5, 2012)

Here's the hype: New York City's "worst teacher" was recently singled out and so labeled by the New York Post after the city's education department released value-added test-score ratings to the media for thousands of city teachers, identifying each by name.

The tabloid treatment didn't stop there. Reporters chased down teacher Pascale Mauclair, the subject of the "worst teacher" slam, bombarding her with questions about her lack of skill and commitment. They even went to her father's home and told him his daughter was among the worst teachers in the city.

Evaluating Teacher Evaluations

February 29, 2012 - Linda Darling-H...

by Linda Darling-Hammond, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Edward Haertel, and Jesse Rothstein

(The Phi Delta Kappan, March 2012)

Practitioners, researchers, and policy makers agree that most current teacher evaluation systems do little to help teachers improve or to support personnel decision making. There's also a growing consensus that evidence of teacher contributions to student learning should be part of teacher evaluation systems, along with evidence about the quality of teacher practices. "Value-added models" (VAMs), designed to evaluate student test score gains from one year to the next, are often promoted as tools to accomplish this goal.

In California: We Need Less Testing and More Assessing

February 15, 2012 - Linda Darling-H...

by Linda Darling-Hammond

(The Sacramento Bee, February 14, 2012)

There is a saying that American students are the most tested and the least examined of any in the world. Nowhere is that more true than in California, where students take 35 tests before they hit the SAT and AP exams.

Gov. Jerry Brown's call for less testing and more focus on meaningful learning is a welcome breath of sanity in an American education landscape that has appeared more and more like Alice's Wonderland. Fortunately, the state's decision to join the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium--a group of more than 20 states creating new tests--will support, rather than conflict with, these goals, as a Feb. 5 story in The Bee suggested.

Public Engagement and Educational Excellence

February 10, 2012 - Wendy D. Puriefoy

by Wendy D. Puriefoy

Too much of the public is missing from public education.

As a people, we recognize the economic value of education, but we under-invest in our schools, both financially and in terms of civic capital. With America's students and schools facing unprecedented needs, and education budgets under enormous pressure, it is time to drastically ramp up civic investment in public education.