Equity, cage-busting, bad times for New York teachers, and more policy papers.
Education Week ran a five-part look at the Common Core. I agree with at least one of the writers.
Closing The Educator Equity Gap
TNTP has some thoughts about how to close the educator equity gap. I suggest starting by figuring out if it really exists.
I ended up having a conversation this week about Rick Hess’s idea of the cage-busting teacher. Like all bootstrappy ideas, it is both wonderful and terrible, depending on the context. That conversation continued here.
NY: Have Evaluation, Will Travel
Many people questioned Andrew Cuomo’s idea of an independent evaluator. They were all correct to do so.
Louisiana State University asked 64 people some bad questions about school reform. The results are less than compelling.
NY: Teachers Can Go To Hell, With a Heavy Heart
Apparently when you kick New York teachers in the gut, it’s better if you say you’re doing it with a heavy heart.
A new study from the Hamilton Project suggests that education’s power to fix the income gap is somewhere between limited and non-existent.
The Atlanta educators who cheated on their school’s tests were convicted this week. Too bad the system wasn’t on trial, too.
Brown Wants More NY Teacher Blood
I would have guessed that Campbell Brown would back off her crusade to do away with tenure since Andrew Cuomo blew a giant hole in it. Nope. She’s not done putting teachers in their place.
AIR wants to fix Title II of ESEA and straighten out professional development in the process. They have a good idea of what the problem is, but less of an idea about how to fix it.
Too many reformsters start out with the incorrect assumption that teaching is not intrinsically rewarding, and that just leads them to get all sorts of things wrong.