Tonight I was over on Tom Vander Ark’s blog. TVA, you might remember, was formerly of Bill Gates’ ed foundation and one of the short-listed candidates in the last LAUSD Superintendent search–the one that yielded. . . da-da-da-dah. . . Admiral Brewer. He’s posted a bit from Fareed Zakaria’s interview of Eric Schmidt, the CEO [...]
Posts under ‘Standardization’
Resegregation: What I Worry About
Anthony Cody, a National Board-certified teacher in the Bay Area, has launched a project to get teachers to write to President Obama. He’s planning on gathering the letters and mailing them to the White House on November 23rd. Here’s mine:
Dear President Obama,
I’m not a worrywart by nature. I teach 5th grade in a high-poverty school [...]
Hot!!!!!
Another brilliant idea from the LAUSD bureaucrats downtown. Three years ago they spent hundreds of millions of dollars installing classroom ac units with thermostats programmable only downtown (remember all those bond measures you’re still paying for?). This summer we’ve returned to our classrooms to find that they’ve reprogrammed the thermostats so that the ac units [...]
The Keeper of the Testing Papers (LAUSD Waste, cont’d.)
Teachers are cut. Class sizes go up. Summer school goes away.
But somewhere, perhaps on a campus near you, sits a person paid to watch tests. I’m not sure which tests: CELDTS go to Sacramento, as do CSTs (I think). Maybe it’s the forms and affidavits teachers sign before administering the tests? [...]
Teachers & Money
There’s a lot of talk out there to link individual teacher pay to test scores. While I’d be thrilled to get a pay raise (and in an earlier post, I shouted, ‘Bring it on!’), here’s why I don’t think this is a good idea.
First all the usual reasons: teachers will teach to the test and [...]
Uh-oh Arne Duncan!
OK, I’ve been on a bit of a hiatus here, what with winter breaks and winter flus and winter doldrums and winter personal lives (would you believe, teachers have personal lives?!). But I’m making my way through the educational headlines for the last week, and along comes this doozy from Arne Duncan, the Secretary of [...]
