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Winning the “Global Competition” Must Be Rejected as the Purpose of Education
Claiming to represent the views of teachers on the occasion of teacher appreciation week, Arne Duncan said: “Nothing is more important than preparing our children to compete and succeed in the global economy”. The purposes for which schools...
Ravitch: The Problem Is Bigger Than a Pineapple
I’m intrigued by Ravitch’s born again status, her being embraced by those who would have otherwise turned their nose at this social conservative decades ago. And note that Ravitch, while playing to lead the “rebellion,”...
The Common Core and the Public/Private Distinction
In a previous post, I noted that the Core are protected by copyright and “owned” by the NGA and CCSS. From the website of the Common Core State Standards Initiative: “The National Governors Association...
Bruce Baker: Charter Schools Are… [Public? Private? Neither? Both?]
This is a key point to raise, and suggests very significant shifts in the governing arrangements being put into place under the guise of “school reform”. Privatization is not simply about making money; it is about...
Anthony Cody on the Common Core: The Technocrats Re-engineer Learning
From Living in Dialogue: As criticism of No Child Left Behind and the associated tests rises, we are hearing more and more about the Common Core Standards (CCS), the next great thing that is supposed to fix all that ails us. When a talking pineapple...
Alan Singer: Cuomo, Common Core and Pearson-for-Profit
One of the arguments of this article is that New York State education policy serves to assist Cuomo’s quest for the U.S. Presidency, and to enrich his friends in Pearson Publishing, who are presented as almost single-handedly...
Peter Schmidt: Videos ‘Ripped’ From Online-Course Footage Bring Threats to Instructors
Today the Chronicle of Higher Education posted this story on their website: The University of Missouri system has been besieged with angry letters and phone calls, and top officials at its St. Louis campus have asked an adjunct faculty member...
Bruce Baker: Smart Guy (Gates) makes my list of “Dumbest Stuff I’ve Ever Read!”
Bill Gates (clearly a very smart guy) has just topped my list of Dumbest Stuff I’ve Ever Read for the first few months of 2011. He did it with this post in the Huffington Post and with his talk to State Governors (in which he also naively...
Stephen Sawchuk: States Aim to Curb Collective Bargaining
In this February 9 article, Sawchuck writes: First it was changes to pay, then evaluation systems, and then tenure laws. Now, lawmakers in several states are challenging collective bargaining, the foundation of teacher unionism. In Idaho and Indiana,...
Anthony Cody: Teachers Beware — They are Coming for Our Pensions
From Teacher Blogs, Living in Dialogue On Wednesday, listening to Talk of the Nation...
