NCLB Anniversary
Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind. Despite the failing memories of everyone who voted for the bill and the organizations that supported it, it has raised awareness of achievement gaps and the achievement of all students even poor and minority students who were typically forgotten. I thought this TIME Magazine piece [...]
California is just weird
California politics is just plain bizarre. When the legislature can’t get a bill passed for their real constituents, the special interest groups, frequently they use the initiative process to get the voters to pass it by framing it in such a way that it sounds like a great idea. Governor Brown’s budget and tax increase proposal is a perfect example. He has crafted a budget where if the voters don’t pass his tax increase measure, functions of government important to the voters such as schools and state parks will take the hit.
Another bizarre California-ism is the belief is that if we just had “enough money” everything would be great whether it is education, health care or prisons. Yet the reality is that there is never going to be “enough money” and our experience has shown that throwing money at a problem will not solve it.
I thought this San Diego Union-Tribune editorial had some interesting points about these phenomena and its impact on education in our state:
I just love irony
I’m not a huge Huffington Post fan, but when they do irony and it is related to education, I just can’t pass it up. This blurb with a picture of a sign congratulating spelling bee winners with the word congratulations misspelled is awesome! As the story states, “This, kids, is irony.” From The Daily What. [...]
Majors matter
As a bit of a wacko conservative, I tend to poo-poo people who graduate with degrees in art or sociology and then complain about not being able to get a high-paying job right out of school. If your goal is a high-paying job, it seems to me that you would want to consider majors that [...]
Merry Christmas!
I hope everyone has a very joyous and Merry Christmas! I’ll be spending time with my family and friends!
NEA Commission recommends radical reforms
I thought this EdTrust piece was interesting. NEA has traditionally been pretty reticent to adopt reforms such as merit-pay, so it was really surprising to see that their commission was recommending that teacher effectiveness be used in personnel decisions. They even made the suggestion that NEA “adopt the goal of improving student learning as a core organizational goal.”
Retired LAUSD teacher admits that some students have to be sacrificed
I’m not a big fan of Walt Gardner, a former K-12 teacher turned blogger for EdWeek. But then, he has a blogging gig with EdWeek and I don’t. 
I’m sure Walt wouldn’t like me much either for that matter. I generally tend to skim his postings far enough to recognize which of his usual positions he’s taking and then move on to the next story.
This piece that appeared today had a line in it that caught my attention. In the post, Walt was using the usual argument that testing doesn’t work because “the rankings do more harm than good because they fail to take into account vital nuances.” To support his point, he points to an example of hospitals being ranked on spending per patient instead of survival rates as similar to how education rankings miss the point.
New blog’s Facebook integration
With my move to WordPress after abandoning Drupal, I had to add back in all the little cool things that make it all work right. If all worked well, this post should get mentioned automatically on Facebook. If not, I’ll just delete it and try it again. The cool thing about that is that you’ll [...]
Leaving old things behind
This inaugural post is evidence of some changes in my blogging world. First, I’m moving my blog to a new domain — DavidJohnston.org. I acquired the domain for my doomed run for re-election to my local school board. The election is over and so I didn’t really need the name for anything political. My blog [...]
The LA Times suggests tests cause cheating
I thought this Los Angeles Times story’s suggestion that the focus on standardized testing is to blame for cheating on those tests is just silly.
If testing is to blame for cheating teachers and administrators, then the tax code is to blame for tax cheats and the speed limit is to blame for speeders. None of these are true. The system is not to blame. The laws themselves are not to blame. The people who commit the illegal and/or unethical acts are to blame. It is just an excuse and a lame one at that.