It seems that everyone, no
matter what side of the aisle, what political ideology, or what other thinking influences
their thinking, agrees that education is vital to the success of any given
individual and to our society as a whole. You'd think that this would mean that
we would be entering a "golden age" for our students, educators and
schools. After all, if education is so important shouldn't that mean that we
will finally commit to fully funding and otherwise fully supporting the work
that educators do in our public schools? Shouldn't we finally see the full
attention of our nation focused on improving educational outcomes for all
students regardless of zip code or demographic? One certainly would think that
given the amount of debate and the attention that education gets from our
political and economic leaders that this would be the case.
Unfortunately, this
current wave of educational "reform" is falling short of the lofty
expectations that its rhetoric sets. Instead of creating an environment where
public education is fully supported and public educators are given the respect
and resources that their professional expertise merits, we are seeing a wave of
privatization and accountability efforts that threaten to destroy the
educational systems that serve our most at-risk communities. These so called
"reforms" miss there mark for a number of reasons.
There is no real definition of what education is,
or the role it serves in our society. All
this talk about education seems to center on education as a resource, or as a
tool, to increase economic opportunity. Yet, there are other ways to define
education and other ways that education is valuable beyond economic measures.
To ignore these other aspects of education reduces our vision for what an
educated citizen is, can and should be.
We have no way to measure "success" with
any degree of accuracy. Because we
have made education a commodity, we are seeing efforts made to quantify what a
well educated student is. This means that we are seeing a rise in testing and
other means of quantifying success for our students, educators and schools.
These measures are used to define success and become a weapon to wield against
our public schools. We forget that test scores are only one measure of a
student's knowledge and accomplishments. Unfortunately, the drive to quantify
education has resulted in some real confusion about what exactly constitutes
success and what results should be considered truly valid and meaningful.
Students at the charter schools, led by Eva S. Moskowitz,
outperform their public school peers but their methods and culture are not for
everyone.
nytimes.com|By KATE TAYLOR
There is no doubt in my
mind that we are seeing a movement in education, centered around testing and
standardization of curriculum, that harms our students and is aimed at
destroying our public schools. The efforts to hold public educators accountable
are unreasonable, not because they ask us to demonstrate our students'
progress, but because they ask us to do so in ways that use invalid
measurements.
You won't believe how convoluted — and, frankly, ridiculous
— this teacher evaluation process is.
washingtonpost.com
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction announced
Thursday the testing window for schools to administer the new Badger Exam would
be delayed because the online delivery platform is not...
m.jsonline.com|By Erin Richards
I'm not a fan of McTests. My formal training is in pedagogy,
and I'm a certified teacher in my home state. Even without my experience in
college and my practicu
aattp.org
The question to ask (and
one that I haven't heard answered in any meaningful way) is, why are our most
powerful and wealthy citizens not putting their own children through these
assessments?
They sent them to a school that doesn't give high-stakes
standardized tests.
washingtonpost.com
The wrong people are making the most important
decisions. It is glaringly
obvious, professional educators are not making educational policy. Instead of
using the expertise and knowledge that our educators have, too many decisions
are influenced by corporations or others who have only financial interests in
the processes that are created. This
means that the best interests of our students, families and communities are
ignored and the needs of the stockholders and wealthy elite are magnified (even
though their children may not even attend public schools). Money has corrupted
our educational policy making process and the impacts are significant.
Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and Obama's Race to the Top
grant program means testing giants are raking in the dough.
alternet.org
Lobbying has helped fuel a nearly $2 billion testing
industry.
washingtonpost.com
A ventilation outlet for a disillusioned, dejected, and
obfuscated late-20's Wisconsinite. Opinions...
wisoapbox.blogspot.in|By Wisconsin
Soapbox
Pearson Education, the British-owned, for-profit education
publishing and high-stakes testing service, rakes in tens of millions in
profits at all levels of the...
commondreams.org
We fail to recognize the challenges that our
students, families and educators face in the educational process. We have done a great job of defining problems that
our students and schools face. We have also clearly identified achievement and
opportunity gaps in our schools. What we have failed to do is to act in any
meaningful way to address these concerns. Those who work in our schools see the
needs of our students first hand, we know what they need, and we work to find
ways to positively impact their lives. Unfortunately, too much of our societal
and political discussion around education misses the mark and focuses on making
cosmetic changes when we need much more radical changes in our entire society.
We've long known that children from affluent families get a
head start that can translate into a long-lasting advantage, especially when it
comes to academic...
huffingtonpost.com
Robert Putnam, the author of "Bowling Alone,"
looks at how kids are experiencing the brunt of inequality and all of its
missed opportunities, and what that means for learning.
blogs.kqed.org
We don't support our public educators. In fact we do the exact opposite. Here in Wisconsin public
educators have been vilified and demonized. The struggles of our students are
blamed on us, while our resources have been drastically reduced. The dialog
around schools and education is increasingly negative. We also can't ignore the
impact that the loss of collective bargaining rights for public educators has
had. Losing the protections that our contracts offered us has reduced our
ability to advocate for our students without fear of retaliation by over
stressed (or sometimes antagonistic) administrators. We are seeing our
workloads increase and our supports dwindle. The result is an exodus of veteran
educators and a diminishing number of new educators entering the profession.
Wages for education (and health services) workers went up
just 1.9 percent over the past year, less than the national average. Why's
that? "Low-wage workers...
scholasticadministrator.typepad.com
As teacher training enrollment drops, we wanted to know: Why
do some teachers stay in the profession?
www.npr.org
Not a week goes by without a national news story proclaiming
the latest sins of a public school teacher. People love to like, share, and
comment on any story that exposes even the smallest wrongdoing on the part of
an educator. I get it, I do....
scarymommy.com|By Abby Winstead
With campuses already preparing to lay off teachers,
eliminate entire majors and cut off scholarships, students and teachers are
gearing up for a budget battle.
thinkprogress.org
Overall, our most prolific voices for reform are
misleading the general public and harming a vast majority of students. The public debate around education is centered on
failure and finding blame. This is a recipe for disaster. Those of us who work
in classrooms with students know that the students we work with have the
potential for greatness. Yet, this potential will not be unlocked by
standardized testing, rigid standards and standardized curriculum. Human beings
don't perform well in these types of stressful and regimented environments. The
creativity and enthusiasm that exist around learning need to be supported and
nurtured, and educators have the knowledge and training to make this a reality.
That’s the conclusion of a growing number of researchers who
argue that 30 years of test scores have not measured a decline in public
schools, but are...
www.psmag.com
In a stroke of whimsy or irony, two new studies about
American education have been released in time to get the most media coverage
during School Choice Week. The first, from the National Center
for Education Statistics (NCES), looks...
charlotteobserver.com
There is hope for the future. More and more people are realizing that our current
direction in education is the wrong path for our students, public schools and
our society in general. The privatization and standardization of assessment and
curriculum are only going to widen the gaps that exist in our society along
pre-existing demographical lines. The efforts to resist these trends are
growing at a grassroots level. One movement that is gaining traction across the
nation is the opting of students out of standardized tests.
The movement to boycott standardized tests and reform
test-based accountability systems current being implemented across the country
is growing. Though...
washingtonpost.com
There are other ways to
support your public school and to work to insure that they remain a resource
that is available to all students. In the end we need to remember that efforts
to privatize only will serve to further the stratification of our society. It
is up to all of us to get accurate information and to stay active in making
sure we protect and promote this cornerstone of democracy.
The
Good, The Bad and
The
Ugly. . .
The Good . . . Voters in Madison confirmed their
commitment to Madison's
public schools with an overwhelming 82-18 margin of victory for the
school-funding referendum. It's great to see such support for our schools and a
recognition that because of the state level funding cuts, our schools need the
financial support of the community.
Madison
voters passed a $41 million school-funding referendum Tuesday at the polls.
channel3000.com|By Channel 3000
We were fortunate to have
two strong mayoral candidates, unlike our neighbor city to the south.
Mayor Paul Soglin and Ald. Scott Resnick have run energetic
campaigns but outside events have overshadowed the race.
host.madison.com|By Dean Mosiman |
Wisconsin State Journal
The Bad . . . While in some ways it was a victory to have forced a runoff election,
it would have been a real success to oust Emanuel.
CHICAGO
-- Four more years of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
wgntv.com
The Ugly . . . The truth is sometimes painful to deal with. Yet, on both a personal
and public level we all have an obligation to do our best to promote open and
honest communication about challenging issues. This is something that we learn
as we grow and mature into responsible adults. Unfortunately, some people fail
to fully develop this part of themselves. This is problematic in general terms,
but the consequences are magnified when these individuals find their way into
positions of power and influence. We see the impact of this in many ways.
There are some who feel
that any effort to promote a real understanding of American history is
unpatriotic and needs to be silenced. Yet, if our history is distorted and
politicized we lose a valuable opportunity to change the trajectory of our
society. If we forget or ignore what has happened it becomes virtually
impossible to learn from the errors our past contains, and we will fail to
apply the lessons that we could learn.
The Texas Board of Education's conservative members went on
the deep end. As the one of the largest buyers of textbooks in the country, the
board changed and...
blog.sfgate.com
History is one area where
misrepresentations and untruths abound, and politics is another. It is here
where this failure to accurately represent our thinking and to be truthful
about our beliefs and objectives has immediate and visible impacts. Propaganda and hyperbole has always been a
part of politics. Telling partial truths, or flat out misrepresenting one's
ideology isn't new, but we are seeing the full impacts of these actions
becoming very real for many of us. This
is true on a national level where efforts to restrict the power of our
government impacts all of our lives.
Turns out cutting the IRS's budget has real-world
consequences.
motherjones.com
Here in Wisconsin we have learned the hard way that
elections matter. One major issue is that those we elect are not campaigning on
issues that they end up acting on. Voters have elected people to represent them
based on incomplete or incorrect information.
Scott Walker's 9-year tenure in the state assembly had been
largely unremarkable. Then a pension scandal rocked Milwaukee County
in 2002, and...
nbcnews.com
We also have seen how a
lack of integrity can be a vehicle for promoting outcomes that sound good to
voters, but have a hidden agenda behind them. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has
become a venue for electioneering and political manipulations instead of a
source of justice for citizens. The idea of having justices elect their chief
justice may be an acceptable practice, but the motivation here in Wisconsin was probably
less about improving our system and more about expanding the power of the
conservative majority that currently controls our state government.
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce has unleashed a
$600,000 ad blitz to strip Wisconsin's
independent Chief Justice of her title just as the court...
prwatch.org
Wisconsin Supreme Court Election Raises Concerns About
Partisanship
Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, out-of-state money has
poured in, and harsh advertisements have...
nytimes.com|By MITCH SMITH
The abuses of power and the
misleading of voters has allowed conservatives to gain a stranglehold on our
entire system. Once in power these "leaders" have changed the way
decisions are made and done everything possible to eliminate any voices of
dissent from the process. The results haven't been positive, and we face an
immediate future with little hope for influencing change.
The three-member board voted 2-1 to prohibit staff from
work related to climate change, even if it's only responding to emails on the
topic.
UW-Madison says budget uncertainty cost campus two top
medical research candidates : Wsj
One candidate, Anne Sales, was chosen for a new endowed,
tenured faculty chair in nursing and is said to have cited Gov. Scott Walker's
$300 million budget cut...
host.madison.com|By Dan Simmons |
Wisconsin State Journal
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