Someone on Education Street Is Cheating

Cheating on high-stakes tests by teachers and administrators is old news.  Should we teachers take to the streets to identify the culprits  and call them to make good?  OK, I'm ready.  Now who's to blame? Children who haven't learned and therefore MADE educators cheat?  Maybe we should complain about local taxpayers who cut education budgets?  How about pointing to NCLB that makes accountability so important?  No, those are not the culprits.  I suggest we protest against the political powerbrokers that have decided to use tests as teacher evaluation measures.   Teacher competence cannot be reliably measured by standardized tests.  For more see:

America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta

www.csmonitor.com

At least 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta Public Schools cheated to raise student scores on high-stakes standardized tests, according to a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.  82 confessed.

On the corner of Hope and Education Streets

Diane Ravitch's recent blog, Reasons for Hope, starts with a sobering look at the traffic on Education Street and follows up with convincing reasons for hope.  A good read.
 

For the past year, the nation's public schools and the educators who work in them have been subjected to an unending assault. Occasionally someone will suggest that this is just another swing of the pendulum and is nothing new. I don't agree. In the past, we have had pendulum swings about pedagogical methods or educational philosophy, but never a full-fledged, well-funded effort to replace public schools with private management and never a full-throated effort to hold public school teachers accountable for the ills of society.

What is happening now has no precedent in the past. For the first time in our history, there is a concerted attempt, led by powerful people, to undermine the very idea of public schooling and to de-professionalize those who work in this sector. Sure, there were always fringe groups and erratic individuals who hated the public schools and who disparaged credentials and degrees as unimportant.

But these were considered extremist views. No one took them seriously. Now the movement toward privatization and de-professionalization has the enthusiastic endorsement of governors and legislatures in several states (including, but not limited to, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Indiana, and Wisconsin). Worse, it has the tacit endorsement of the Obama administration, whose Race to the Top has given the movement a bipartisan patina. And Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has said little or nothing to discourage the Tea Party assault on public education.

Are there reasons to hope?  Read on at:

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-