From the Shanker Blog, the voice the Albert Shanker Institute:
“In a recent Washington Post article called ‘Teachers leaning in favor of reforms,’ veteran reporter Jay Mathews puts forth an argument that one hears rather frequently — that teachers are ‘changing their minds,’ in a favorable direction, about the current wave of education reform. Among other things, Mr. Mathews cites two teacher surveys. One of them, which we discussed here, is a single-year survey that doesn’t actually look at trends, and therefore cannot tell us much about shifts in teachers’ attitudes over time (it was also a voluntary online survey).
“His second source, on the other hand, is in fact a useful means of (cautiously) assessing such trends (though the article doesn’t actually look at them). That is the Education Sector survey of a nationally-representative sample of U.S. teachers, which they conducted in 2003, 2007 and, most recently, in 2011…”
Read more on the Shanker Blog.
From the Washington Post
HOORAY! Superintendent in Montgomery County (17th largest in US) Calls for Moratorium on Standardized Testing
“Montgomery County Superintendent Joshua Starr said Monday that the country needs a three-year moratorium on standardized testing and needs to “stop the insanity” of evaluating teachers according to student test scores because it is based on ‘bad science.’ He also said that the best education reform the country has had is actually health-care reform…”
Read the rest of the article.