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Civil Rights, Community-based Groups Signal New Education Consensus; MCAS study finds ‘teachers are not to blame’

August 3, 2010 by

Three timely and significant reports have been released in the past few weeks that signal a promising change in the public debate on education. A coalition of major national civil rights groups and another of community-based organizations have issued statements and recommendations strongly critical of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top initiative, signaling a growing consensus that it’s time for a change in direction from the education policies initiated by President Bush and continued by Duncan and President Obama. And a new MCAS study reported in Commonwealth Magazine undermines the idea that we simply need to get rid of bad teachers to turn around “failing schools.” All three are worth reading and supporting.

The civil rights groups’ statement, titled “”Framework for Providing All Students an Opportunity to Learn” says, in part:

“The Race to the Top Fund and similar strategies for awarding federal education funding will ultimately leave states competing with states, parents competing with parents, and students competing with other students…..

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Filed Under: Achievement Gap, Charter Schools

New study finds no clear edge for charters

June 29, 2010 by

Education Week reports on June 29, 2010 on a new national study of charter middle schools. The  report begins:

Students who won lotteries to attend charter middle schools performed, on average, no better in mathematics and reading than their peers who lost out in the random admissions process and enrolled in nearby regular public schools, according to a national study released today.

The federally commissioned study, involving 2,330 students who applied to 36 charter middle schools in 15 states, represents the first large-scale randomized trial of the effectiveness of charter schools across several states and rural, suburban, and urban locales. The charter schools in the sample conducted random lotteries for admissions, so that only chance determined who attended.

The full article is here.

The study is here.   → Read More

Filed Under: Charter Schools

Pauline Lipman: The Attack on Public Education

June 18, 2010 by

Pauline Lipman is Professor of Policy Studies in the College of Education, University of Illinois-Chicago. Professor Lipman presented a powerful keynote at Saving Our Schools: Defending Public Education, a  March 27 conference co-sponsored by Citizens for Public Schools and the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM). Coming from Chicago, former home of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Lipman described the devastating consequences of Duncan’s privatization efforts as CEO of Chicago public schools. She exhorted the audience to keep at the forefront a vision of what we want for our public schools:

We need more than opposition to what we are against. Forging a social movement to defend public education means defining what we are for. It is not surprising that some parents and students in Chicago are not enthusiastic about defending public education. Public schools, like other public services (think public assistance, public hospitals, the police) have a deeply flawed record of exclusion, disrespect, racism, hostility, even violence for working class and low-income people of color.

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Filed Under: Conference, Education

CPS on the Move in Massachusetts

June 15, 2010 by

CPS Board Members Louis Kruger and Ann O’Halloran were invited to Bristol Community College in Fall River to speak to a group of teachers about the MCAS and show Lou’s film. Herald News Reporter Will Richmond covered the meeting.

Northeastern professor blasts MCAS system


 
Dave Souza|Herald News

Louis Kruger, a psychology professor at Northeastern University, recently spoke against MCAS exams during a talk entitled “Children Left Behind” at Bristol Community College.

By Will Richmond
Herald News Staff Reporter

From left, retired teacher John Cummings, Ann O'Halloran, Lou Kruger, Rep. David Sullivan.

As the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exam continues to grow, so does support for removing the tests as a graduation requirement.

With a group made up primarily of current and retired teachers in attendance, Louis Kruger, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, recently spoke about how the MCAS exam is impacting students during a presentation titled “Children Left Behind” at Bristol Community College.   → Read More

Filed Under: Education, Film

CPS deplores denial of diplomas based on Science MCAS

June 3, 2010 by

The report that almost 3,000 Massachusetts high school seniors will be denied diplomas based on Science MCAS scores reveals once again the deep flaws of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (BESE) high-stakes testing policies. These are students who have completed four years of high school and satisfied the requirements of their school districts. Many of them overcame significant obstacles such as learning disabilities, economic hardship, or learning the English language in addition to their academic subjects.

These students will have difficulty continuing their education and are likely to be derailed from productive futures, at great cost to themselves and our social fabric. Failure to earn a high school diploma means these young people will earn far less, have less stable families, and are more likely to land in prison. We can ill afford a public policy that puts thousands of Massachusetts students on a path to failure because of a few points on a single standardized test.   → Read More

Filed Under: Education-Other
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