Read These Writers

There are a lot of good people in the edublogosphere, and if you've made it to this blog, you probably know many of them already. But for those of you just getting into the business, here's a quick reference list of some of my favorites with a capsule over-simplified explanation. Do sample and read and share-- amplifying voices is one way to make your point in the world. [Also, I didn't think this needed to be said, but I guess it does-- I read a wide variety of people with a wide variety of viewpoints because it's the only way to get a full picture of what's going on and what people are thinking. Does that mean I endorse every single word that every single one of these people post? Of course not, and neither should you. If you are looking for someone you can follow thoughtlessly 100% of the time, you are doing this whole thing wrong.]

I could try to organize these by geography or by how fiery or how funny or how progressive or some other issues play out, but ultimately this will take me a while to type out anyway, so let's go with the alphabet.

There's no doubt I've missed some folks (there are over 200 bloggers in the Education Bloggers Network alone), and that's before we even get to people like Wendy Lecker and Alan Singer and John Thompson who all are worth reading but who don't have a "home' I can link to. If you have other suggestions, feel free to add them to the comments. In the meantime, sample. It's vacation. You've got the time. Do some reading.

A View from the Edge

Rob Miller (@edgeblogger) is an Oklahoma educator who has done all-- marine, teacher, administrator. He brings a light sense of humor to national and Oklahoma stories.

Accountabaloney

I'm a sucker for a good name, but this Florida blogging duo includes a graphic designer, so it looks good, too. The good fight in Florida is a barometer for reformy messes elsewhere, and these folks have a good eye for malarkey.

Alfie Kohn

Kohn doesn't post often, but when he does, you don't want to miss it. This is what actual education reform ideas look like.

Andrea Gabor

Gabor is a journalist and author (The Capitalist Philosophers, Einstein's Wife) who is frequently doing exceptional work looking at charter schools.

Answer Sheet

Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post is the only big media journalist doing regular, daily coverage of education. Get national news, a public ed perspective, and answers from the kind of people who will ignore bloggers like me, but answer the phone when it says "Someone from the Washington Post is calling."

Automated Teaching Machine

Adam Bessie is a cartoonist who works the education beat. For those of you who like visuals.

Badass Teachers Association

The activist group, best known through their facebook page, also has a blog featuring an assortment of voices.

Big Education Ape 

One of the best aggregators of edublogging out there. If you only have time to make a couple of stops, BEA will get you up to speed. And as a bonus, you get some fairly hilarious paste-up illustrations.

BustED Pencils

BustED Pencils is a webcast (I've been a guest and it was fun), and it is also the host to regular blogging from Morna McDermott, Peggy Robertson, and others, as well as regular features like What Would Matt Damon's Mom Say. It is unabashedly progressive and activist.

Blue Cereal Education

Another Oklahoma blogger focusing on national issues. "Everything I say is so wise even I can hardly believe it. Feel free to concur."

Bob Braun's Ledger

Long-time New Jersey reporter who has covered politics and education for decades. Regional and national stories with a hard-eyed reporter's view.

Bright Lights Small City

Sarah Lahm covers Minneapolis schools, policy and politics. As with many of the regional bloggers, her writing gives a good look at how the bigger issues play out on a smaller, specific stage.

Charter School Watchdog

Longstanding clearing house for news of charter school shenanigans.

Chicago Public Fools

Julie Vassilatos blogs in and about Chicago, but watches national stories as well.

Clemsy's Corner

For a more militant take on the education debates and national policy, read Michael Lambert, who posts mostly when he's cranked up.

Cloaking Inequality

Julian Vasquez Heilig has been a visible and vocal part of the pro-public ed movement, covering a wide range of national topics.

Dad Gone Wild

A father in Tennessee who has educated himself in the issues and done some activist work as well. Another regional blogger with national lessons for all of us to learn.

Daniel Katz

Katz is the head of the Department of Education Studies at Seton Hall and a former HS English teacher. He presents a well-researched, thoughtful take on what's going on nationally.

DCulberhouse

Generally Really Big Picture thoughts about transformation, leadership, and how it relates to organizations like schools.

Deustch29

I don't call her the indispensable Mercedes Schneider for nothing. Schneider blogs almost daily, generally on topics for which she has done research and digging-- she comes up with the facts about the reformsters and their organizations that nobody else had discovered.

Diane Ravitch's Blog

The chances that you read me and don't know about Ravitch are zero-to-none. But this list would look odd without her on it. This blog is like the pro-public education town square where everyone passes through at some point.

Eclectablog

The primo source for progressive coverage of all things Michigan. And they've now got Mitchell Robinson blogging about education for them. Essential regional read if you want to understand the state that spawned DeVos.

Education in the Age of Globalization

The website of Yong Zhao, an international writer and thinker about education. The best man to put China's educational "achievements" in perspective.

Education Opportunity Network

One of the places to find the work of education writer Jeff Bryant. Always well-sourced and thorough, a grown-up voice for public education.

Educolor

Educolor is a movement, a network, a hashtag, and a voice for equity in education. This is a place where you can start to get activated.

Edushyster

Funny and informative, the humor content here often overshadows the actual journalism, but it's the journalism that's really most impressive. Jennifer Berkshire goes places, and talks to people, and we all get to find out how things look on the ground.

Finding Common Ground

One of the family of EdWeek blogs. Peter DeWitt is a former principal and a bridge-builder who is almost always entirely reasonable and thoughtful when discussing issues of policy or managing a school.

Fourth Generation Teacher

Claudia Swisher is yet another Oklahoma blogger and advocate who provides a good look at what advocacy looks like on the ground out west.

Fred Klonsky

Progressive union-loving activist with a clear direct tell-it-like-it-is style, writing in Chicago.

Gadfly on the Wall

Steven Singer blogs about national issues from a fiery progressive perspective.

Gary Rubinstein

Former TFA-er who keeps the pressure on that organization as well as other reformsters in New York.

Gene Glass

A senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and co-author of 50 Myths & Lies that Threaten America's Public Schools. Smart man with a wide grasp of the actual research behind policy debates.

Jersey Jazzman

There's no better place for plain-language explanations of the wonky data behind policy debates. I've learned a ton reading this blog.

Keystone State Education Coalition

A great roundup of links to news and commentary regarding Pennsylvania education.

Living in Dialogue

Anthony Cody, a co-founder of the Network for Public Education, has long been one of the steady progressive blogging voices in education. This site continues his own blogging work along with contributions from other strong voices for public education.

Marie Corfield

The teacher who got yelled at by Chris Christie in that video. Now she's a strong voice for public ed activism in New Jersey.

Mitchell Robinson

Heads music education for Michigan State University, as well as being a long-time policy wonk. Great lively writing about national issues.

Momma Bears

If you're going to talk about public education activism in Tennessee, you have to talk about the Momma Bears, digging deep and laying bare the tools of the reformsters.

Mother Crusader

New Jersey mom who became a powerhouse public education advocate.

Mr. Anderson Reads and Writes

Reading, writing and policy, digging deep for details, from a classroom teacher.

My Two Cents

Mary J. Holden was an English who left the classroom and became an education activist. Located in Nashville, she's busy in one of the flagship states of reforminess, so there's lots for us to learn from her.

Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Former special ed teacher with a Ph.D. in educational leadership, Bailey tackles national issues with both fists.

NYC Public School Parents 

Leonie Haimson and Class Size Matters are among the heroes in the defense of public education. They thwarted a big data incursion into NY, and they continue to have a sharp eye on what threatens public education in this country.

Politics K-12

Alyson Klein and Andrew Ujifusa cover the political side of education at EdWeek and are a reliable source of what's happening in the halls of power.

The Progressive-- Public School Shakedown

The Progressive magazine is about the only news magazine with an actual commitment to public education, and that is shown through this ongoing project featuring eleven outstanding national writers (plus me).

Russ on Reading

Russ Walsh focuses on reading instruction, but sees the connections to larger education issues. Incidentally, Walsh has published the definitive layperson's guide to what's going on in ed reform.

Save Maine Schools

Emily Talmage is based in Maine, but she has been one of the voices out front in spotting and opposing the personalized competency based computerized learning trend.

School Finance 101

Bruce Baker manages to make sense out of the twisted labyrinth that is school financing. More interesting and important than you may imagine.

Schooling in the Ownership Society

A blog focusing on the moves to privatize public education with corporate reform.

Schools Matter

A roster of writers that includes Doug Martin, who wrote the book on Indiana Ed Corruption, and Jim Horn, who takes no prisoners and makes no compromises, but he knows his stuff. An aggressively anti-reform site.

Seattle Education

Another regional blog with a national take on ed reform, filtered through the unique perspective that comes from living in the shadow of Bill Gates' money.

Susan Ohanian

Ohanian had started to figure out what the hell was going wrong long before some of us had even started to wake up. Do not be put off by the design of her site, which can be... well, challenging. Trust me that it's worth it to dig in.

Teacher in a Strange Land

If you are unpaid viewer at EdWeek with only so many views per month, make Nancy Flanagan's blog your first priority. She's not as obviously combative, sparkly or full of fireworks as some blogs on this list, but she is smart and funny and honest and always worth the read.

Teacher Tom

Tom teaches at a pre-school co-op in Seattle, and his perspective (and that of his students) is always a welcome breath of cool air.

The Becoming Radical

Paul Thomas is a college professor comfortable blending references to ed research, race issues, poetry and comic books. A good pair of eyes for seeing beneath the surface of many issues in the ed realm.

The Jose Vilson

A consistently decent, human, humane, and personal perspective on teaching and race. Pretty sure this is one of the major teaching voices of a generation.

The Merrow Report

John Merrow was a top reporter for decades. He's retired, but he hasn't stopped finding and commenting on some of the important stories in education.

Troy LaRaviere's Blog

LaRaviere was a principal in Chicago, and refused to buckle even when the school system and Rahm Emanuel came after him. He's still paying close attention.

Tultican

Thomas Tultican keeps an eye on national stories and the bloggers who cover them.

Wait What?

Connecticut blogger Jon Pelto has been fighting corporate control in politics and education.

What Is Common Core

These ladies in Utah are from the conservative wing of The Resistance; they pay close attention and do their homework, and they've been doing it for over four years, making them oldsters in this game.

Vouchers-- The Religious School Windfall

School vouchers are one of the great zombie ideas of education, a shambling mess that simply won't die. Some attempts have even been ruled unconstitutional (see the privatizing heaven of Florida and North Carolina, America's Armpit), but that does not stop some folks from dreaming of more voucher programs, and we should probably pay attention, because one of those folks is Education Secretary-in-Waiting Betsy DeVos.

Vouchers are the dream of money in a backpack, strapped onto every wandering student. They have been sold as an engine of equality (they work more like, well, the exact opposite) as well as the same old baloney about choice leading to competition leading to excellence. But these are the public arguments for vouchers; the private arguments are less inspiring.

We can get a look at how these things really work by looking at Indiana, another state where GOP legislators have been diligently working to dismantle public education and sell off the pieces to entrepreneurs. But while a choice-charter system opens the door to let all sorts of folks get into the education-flavored-business game, voucher systems are a huge benefit for another group of people-- people who are already running private schools, specifically religious private schools.

Mark Weber (Jersey Jazzman) has crunched the numbers for Indiana vouchers and the numbers say that religious schools are sucking up public tax dollars like crazy. Greater than 97% of the voucher schools in Indiana are some sort of Christian-affiliated religious private school. A whopping 42% are Catholic schools. (You should read the full piece for all the details)

Emma Brown and Mandy McLaren also recently took a look at Indiana's voucher history. That history began in 2011 under then-Gov Mitch Daniels. But that program had a cap and pretended to be aimed at students in poverty. Daniels was replaced by Mike Pence, who wanted to set the program loose:

“There’s nothing that ails our schools that can’t be fixed by giving parents more choices and teachers more freedom to teach,” Pence said during his inaugural address in 2013.

And he definitely set out to accomplish one of those things (unless "freedom to teach" actually means "freedom to work without job protections"), raising the income limits and participation numbers. Oh, and voucher participants no longer had to have been previously enrolled in public school. If you had always sent your child to a private religious school, you could keep on doing it-- but now with your fellow taxpayers giving you a nice rebate check.

And indeed, Brown and McLaren found that in 2016, 52% of Indiana students using vouchers had never set foot in a public school. 300 Indiana schools accepted voucher students-- 44 of those schools had 75% or more students using vouchers.

In fact, Weber finds no signs that new schools are springing up to take advantage of voucher proliferation-- just the same old private schools now able to augment their revenue stream with public tax dollars.

There are all sorts of problems with this. As courts in other states have ruled, there's the whole issue of government using public dollars to fund private religious schools. Additionally, these private schools are free to discriminate in any way shape or form when it comes to admitting students. Think about that-- your own child could be turned away from a private school for any reason right down to your family's religion, and then your own tax dollars can be used as voucher funds to send your neighbor's kid to that same school that your own child isn't "good enough" to attend.

The financial impact on public schools is also an issue. Remember, the majority of voucher students never attended public school in the first place, which means that a bunch of money leaves a public school that is still serving the exact same number of students as before. Voucherizing private schools is done at the direct expense of public schools.

And while vouchers may defray private school costs, they are rarely enough to cover the costs entirely. While Brown and McLaren found at least one parent who claimed she would not otherwise have been able to send her kids to private school, that was a "middle class" family. No poor kids are getting to attend $40K/year private schools with their "up-to-$4,800" voucher. And while I haven't found any figures or studies addressing the question, I have to wonder if vouchers will create the kind of effect that loans and grants for post-secondary education has seen, with tuition costs swelling to match the most that families can pay.

None of this is unique to Indiana. Weber looked at Louisiana, Milwaukee and DC and found the same pattern. In Milwaukee, about 90% of voucher students are at Christian schools (42% Catholic). In DC, about 75% of vouchers go to private Christian schools (53% Catholic). And in Louisiana, a little over 95% of vouchers go to private Christian schools, with a whopping 75% going to Catholic schools. It is no surprise that where you find supporters for voucher programs, you will find the Catholic Church, which uses voucher programs to keep its schools healthy.

It is one of those odd discontinuities in the debate that vouchers are also beloved by the GOP. The same folks who condemned Bernie Sanders' "free college" like vouchers just fine. So, it's bad to use public money to send people to a private college, but an entitlement for K-12 students to attend a private school at public expense is okay.

It's hard to say at this point what DeVos could do to foster her beloved voucher programs at the federal level, but if she finds a way, it will mark a new day in channeling public tax dollars to private religious organizations.

Is Common Core Gaining Ground with Teachers?

In October, a bit over 500 registered readers of the EdWeek website took a survey about the Core. The results from these elementary, middle and high school teachers are not earth-shattering, but we might tease a few conclusions out.

You want me to do what??!!

First, it's worth noting that using EdWeek registered readers means a certain amount of self-selected bias. While I'm not particularly put off by the magazine's history and backing, many are-- EdWeek gets plenty of money from the reformy industry and, like every publication out there, occasionally blurs the line between "real" content and content-flavored advertising. But I worked for EdWeek for a year and found them to be nothing but supportive, including giving me a nice chunk of Bill Gates money to pay me for a piece attacking the Core. They never told me what I couldn't say. They were also long-time hosts of Anthony Cody's work, and they continue to host Nancy Flanagan, one of the most important pro-public ed bloggers out there.

So I don't think they are corporate shills in the back pocket of the enemy. At the same time, they are a business that knows which side their bread is buttered on, and there is a certain corporate air to it (as well as an actual paywall), so its readership does not necessarily represent the full spectrum of teacheriness. And this article, which consults only Core boosters are expert opinions, is trying had to spin positive for the Core.

But I digress. What did the survey say?

Prepared?

39% of teachers report that they feel "well-prepared" to teach the standards. That's almost double the 20% reported in 2012, but it's not very impressive. If I found that only 39% of my students felt well-prepared to take a unit test, I would figure my teaching needs some work. That figure drops considerably when the survey asks about ELL, special needs, or just plain at risk students. So, I don't know-- 39% feel very prepared if they're just going to be teaching those kids who learn whatever you put in front of them?

And student preparation? Only 10% said their students were ready to master the standards, which is still double four years ago, but still way less than a lot. On this I have to agree with quoted reformster Morgan Polikoff, who blames the word "master," a word that sets the bar mighty high.

Resources?

Only 18% of respondents felt that classroom resources are well-aligned (double the 2012 response). Teachers who think their professional development is swell come in at about the same number, which seems... high. One of the Great White Whales of education is a school district that does professional development well. In some cases, the state has hamstrung everyone by declaring that all PD must involve some specific list of features, guaranteeing that PD will be useless for everyone except the vendors making money by providing PD.

The popular solution is to go to sharing websites (Teachers Pay Teachers is a popular solution) to get ideas and materials from other teachers.

Do we even know what we're talking about?

Those two areas raise some questions. For instance, when 39% report that they are prepped and ready to implement the Core, do they even know what they're talking about?

When asked to explain how they know if something is Common Core aligned, 51% teachers said, "Well, I got it from a repository of supposedly-aligned stuff." If that repository is, say, a state operated website, or a publisher's bin labeled "Common Core Ready We Swear" then that's only slightly more accurate than a ouija board. Other methods included using expert rubrics and asking either peers or supervisors of some sort at your district.

So if we're asking, "Is there are any reason to believe that all these Common Core-aligned claimants are actually Common Core-aligned?" the answer is, "No, no there isn't."

This is no surprise. One part of the hash that was the Common Core roll-out was that we were supposed to change nothing at all about the Core (and only add 15% to it) but then people pushed back and the Powers That Be said, "Well, okay, do what you want," and so the Core was distributed through a loose network of folks who all added their own interpretations and publishers who just slapped CCSS on anything, and all of this happened against the backdrop of Common Core creators who unleashed their creation and then left the building before anyone could ask questions. Do you want someone authoritative to ask the question, "Is this really Common Core aligned?" Too bad-- there is no such authoritative voice anywhere to be found. So everyone is reduced to just making shit up (which is only fair, since that's basically the research basis for the Core in the first place).

The CEO of Achieve, a big CCSS clearinghouse and advocacy, had a chance to respond. "It's good that they're thinking about alignment," was the best she could come up with. Meanwhile, teachers are logging onto websites and telling each other, "Yeah, I can make this fit with those standards-aligned waste-of-time lesson plans we have to do. Is it really Common Core? Who knows? Who cares?"

PD woes

This may be my favorite finding from the survey. A large number (the actual data in this article is frustrating, as is the lack of a link to the actual findings) of teachers agreed that they have "had some training and do not want more." Similar findings have been reported with ten-year-olds regarding spinach.

And another interesting result-- most teachers feel they are more knowledgeable than their administrators.

Politics and the Standards That Do Not Speak Their Name

Less than half the teachers use the term "Common Core" freely and without restraint. Most are guarded when talking to students or parents. That may be because only 7% report getting positive feedback from parents about the Core.

So what have we learned?

The Common Core are not exactly a giant snowballed, barrelling down the mountain and gaining strength and speed as it comes. More like a hamster trying to drag a rusted Studebaker up the mountain. More teachers are used to the hamster, recognize the hamster, and know how to walk up the mountain without letting the hamster get in their way. But hardly anyone is stopping to help the hamster, and the chances that the hamster is going to get to the mountaintop before it drops dead of exhaustion or old age-- well, it's not looking good. And I don't think encouraging press is going to help. 

Privatized Freedom

Joseph Natoli has a piece at Truth-Out that's well worth reading, but for all the explication and coverage of the deliberate destruction of Detroit school "The Great Unwinding of Public Education: Detroit and DeVos" has some keen insights into the underlying pathologies fueling the privatization movement. Here's the line that reached out and whacked me right between the eyes:

We have internalized the mantra that all human endeavors that are placed in the hands of private enterprise succeed, whereas those run by the government not only do poorly but also rob freedom-loving people in the US of their freedom.

Well, yes.

I can feel the tension between the two poles. I know that when it comes to education reform, I'm most easily lumped in with a progressive crowd, but my distrust of government is large and deep. In the long run, centralized power has a bunch of built-in problems. To work, it has to attract people who are pretty good at figuring out (or recognizing) solutions all or most of the time, and that describes basically .02% of the human race-- any kind of government that focuses on finding the One Right Answer for everyone is guaranteed to make a hash of things.

But the pitfalls of government are worse than that. Libertarian comedy writer P. J. O'Rourke describes politics as "the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit." And in the long run, the more power and privilege a government possesses, the more it will attract people who simply want the power and the privilege. We are living through the demonstration of that principle right now, with a Congress that devotes half its workday to working for re-election, a whole raft of elected officials who have no interest in really governing effectively, and a Presidency captured by a dim-witted mass of yawping ego who wants the office for the same reason that he wants shiny things and hot women-- somewhere in the yawning gulf that is where his heart should be, there's a tiny voice that tells him that if he Gets Stuff it will prove he's actually awesome.

And this is doubly scary because over the decades, we have allowed, even encouraged, more power to drift to DC. Each new President gets to play with new toys left lying around by the last one.

In short, I have a great deal of sympathy for the notion that government is very bad at doing very many things, and that often government's ideas about the One Right Answer we should all be choosing do, in fact, strip a little more of our liberty away from us.

But-- and this is a huge but-- that doesn't mean that private enterprise offers any kind of solution.

In fact, one of the ironies of this whole debate is that very often when government is busy stripping us of liberties and freedom, that government is actually serving as a mask for private enterprise.

This is not new. The Boston Tea Party that we so like to sort-of half-remember? Patriots didn't pick the East India Company's shipment of tea at random-- the tax they were protesting had been passed, in large part, to help the East India Company overcome its own financial struggles. The first Tea Party was thrown just as much to fight a corporation as a crown.

The examples are endless, from regulations about asbestos in school passed to benefit asbestos removal companies, all the way up to mobilizing the US Army to crush striking unions. Sometimes we are seeing the result of an ideological alignment, but sometimes it's simple math-- to keep their office, an elected official needs the kind of money that only a friendly, happy corporation can provide.

Are corporations better at getting things done? Sure-- some things. Corporations are good at building things, selling things, and making money from the process. But they have always-- always-- depended on government to maintain the playing field and they have always lobbied for that field to be tilted in a way that benefits them. The very notion of a Free Market is a fiction-- there is no such thing and there never has been. Instead, we have at best a free-ish market maintained by a government and its set of rules, and because those rules are chosen and maintained they are always open to debate, and corporations will always want to debate them, to game whatever system is in place. Because what corporations are best at is looking out for themselves, their own profits, their own power, their own benefits.

That means that the common good, the benefits, safety, freedom and liberty of citizens is never top of the corporate list. We have a fun fiction where we argue that we can make citizens look as if they are top of the list by linking profits to citizen well-being, but the important thing to remember is that even in such situations, the corporation is still looking out for itself, and the best way to do that is to try to get a favorable tilt on the field. Fewer rules to follow. More permission to pick and choose only profitable customers. The profiteers have every reason to stay close-- very close-- to the rule makers, because that relationship is far more profitable than the relationship with citizens.

In fact, the biggest lie in the mantra that Natoli cites is not that private enterprise does better work than the government-- the biggest lie is that there is some big difference between private enterprise and government, that they are not a collection of connected people moving back and forth within many private and public goals, always serving the same corporate power complex.

I don't have an answer to any of this. Well, the answer is to have people in power with some sort of moral and ethical sense and guidance, but I don't know how we get there from here. The answer is also to have a government that actually represents the citizens of the country; not sure how we get there, either. Elected officials are, at least, elected.

Maybe it starts with educating people to scenarios like the one in Detroit, to lifting the curtain so that a few more people every day can see the greedy, grasping, rapacious men behind the curtain, one wearing the mask of government and the other the mask of free enterprise, both liars, both working the levers of power for no cause but their own. Maybe if enough people see that enough times, it will make a difference. I truly don't know.

ICYMI: Christmas Digestion Edition

Yes, it's Christmas day, but I am a creature of habit, so for those of you who, for whatever reason, have some time on your hands, here's this week's list of read-worthy writing. Have an excellent day!

When It Comes to Charter Schools, Facts Matter

Wendy Lecker's interview with Robert Cotto, Jr. about some of the claims being made by charters in Connecticut (and elsewhere)

Anatomy of a Failure: How a Promising LA Charter Came Apart at the Seams

One more look at how the world of charters really works. Or rather, how it doesn't work at all.

The Complicated History of America's First Union-Backed Charter Effort

The title is a tiny bit misleading, but here, again, a story of exactly how a charter effort comes off the rails.

The Charter School Profiteers

Allie Gross was going to teach in a Detroit charter to make a difference. What she found changed her mind. This piece is from 2014, but it's yet another good look inside the charter machine.

The Movies That Doesn't Exist and the Redditors Who Think It Does

This is not directly related to education at all, but it's still a fascinating look at how we spread and hold onto "facts" that just aren't so.

Protect Public Ed

44 teachers of the year have combined forces to speak up for public education. There isn't much at this site yet, but it's worth paying attention.

China Helps Game SATs

Reuters continues to be teh go-to source for journalism about the SAT. Here's a closer look at how China maintains a thriving cheating industry for the venerable test.


Is This The Most Dangerous Member of Trump's Cabinet

The Big Think, a website outside the education community, with a consideration of Betsy DeVos as the most destructive proposed cabinet member

What School Grades Really Say

An editorial from Evansville, Indiana takes a cold hard look at which school grades actually tell us (hint: not how good the schools are)

For Your Christmas Listening

Here's hoping today is a great day for you and yours. For your listening pleasure, here's an assortment of traditional and not-so-traditional holiday music. May today be an excellent day!

The Only Subjects That Matter

There's a message that has been delivered loud and clear for the last decade-- only two subjects in school matter. Only reading and math affect a school's rating. Only reading and math scores factor in teacher evaluation. Only reading and math come with state-approved Official Standards. Only reading and math are on the all-important Big Standardized Test, now believed by an entire generation of school children to be the entire purpose of schools.

History? Science? Music? Art? Well, there are still some parents out there who remember these as being part of school, and so there's not full support yet for getting rid of them (kind of like some folks are sure that cursive writing has to be part of school).

This has left other disciplines in a bit of a bind.

On the one hand, it would be a kind of boost to folks who teach history and science and all that other cool stuff if they were part of the whole test-driven school set-up. If history were on the BS Test, schools wouldn't just cut history classes, or only offer history to students who don't need test prep remediation classes.

Don't even think about it.

And yet, what the experience of math and reading shows us is that the bad amateur standards and the horrible tests exert a power warp and twist and distort the subject areas into a dark, sad, stunted dark mirror image of their best selves. I have filled a million miles of blog with the business of explaining and depicting the badness, but the bottom line is that when you design a course of study around the goal of being to measure it with bad multiple choice questions-- well, it's like trying to jam a buffalo into a mason jar-- only, unfortunately, in this case the mason jar is made of some unyielding adamantium substance, and so it is the buffalo that loses the fight.

So one the one hand, science standards have been greeted by sciencey folks because they will get science off the list of Unimportant Subjects. On the other hand, lots of sciencey folks are afraid that the science standards kind of suck. Said the American Society of Physics Teachers of the Next Generation Science Standards (Draft 2), "the wording of many of the NGSS performance expectations is confusing to the point that it is not clear what students are actually supposed to do," and that "the science content of the current form of NGSS contains so many errors that most science teachers and scientists will doubt the credibility of the entire enterprise."

I myself worry a lot about history. I'm an English teacher, but I will argue till your ears are blue that history is the single most important subject of all and the root of all other education. But what to do about that?

Witness Massachusetts, where history is marked for inclusion in the Big Standardized Testing Expansion Pack, a move that has been questioned by Barbara Madeloni (Massachusetts Teacher Association). As the state bureaucrats consider more testing, she stood before them to object

"I cannot believe that you are being asked to add more testing to that regime," she said. "It reflects a profoundly bureaucratic and technocratic view of what it means to learn." 

She is absolutely correct. But the editorial writers of mass.live are also correct when they write that history cannot continue to be considered a second-class citizen. The problem is that we've reached the point where they see no way to do that but by testing.

Ideally, such improvement could be implemented without a standardized test. But if there is no test, there will be no incentive within school systems to improve history education, a fact Madeloni omits when decrying the MCAS model.

The problem that the editorial writers overlook is that there could not be a worse subject to examine through a BS Test than history (though there are others that are just as bad). History is the antithesis of a One Right Answer field of study. It's a field in which "answers" look a lot more like conversations, a shifting and dynamic balance between facts and human perception and background and perspectives. This is why so much school history instruction is so bad- to avoid any debate or upset or confusion or controversy, we stick to what is "settled" which is, generally, boring names and dates. There was a guy named Columbus who sailed the ocean blue in 1492, and we're going to stop right there before anyone gets bent out of shape.

History's answers are four-dimensional. Standardized test questions are one-dimensional. And so here we go, jamming a buffalo into a mason jar.

So what do we do? If I were a history or science teacher, would I accept promotion to First Class Core Subject and then try to teach my discipline properly as a sort of guerrilla activity while doing my minimum test prep. Thousands of English teachers are faking compliance with the standards-- maybe that could work for other disciplines. Still, the daily pressure of being pushed to commit educational malpractice-- I mean, is getting on the Subject That Matters list worth it?

The fact that we have to even discuss such a twisted choice is one more measure of the damage being done by the era of test-driven management of test-centered schools (and this is without even getting into the bizarrely stupid and terrible local tests being committed by schools in subjects like music and phys ed just so those subjects can haz "data" too). Subject areas are now that at-risk kid in your room who thinks the only attention he can get is negative attention, but maybe that's better than being ignored.

This is what we've done. We have not reduced the Subjects That Matter list to two-- reading and math. We have reduced it to one-- the only subject that matters is testing, a subject that has little or nothing to do with education. If you are having trouble jamming a buffalo into a mason jar, you need to spend less time considering technique and more time questioning whether you're engaged in a futile and ultimately stupid endeavor.

We can talk about lots of different threats to public education right now, and some may be noisier or flashier, but if I were to become emperor of the education world, the first thing I would do is banish the Big Standardized Test completely. There's no single act that could do more to radically improve education in this country.