Laura Chapman: ESSA and the Degradation of Teacher Preparation

Laura Chapman, retired arts consultant, predicts that the new “Every Student Succeeds Act” is a blow against professional teacher preparation. It offers carte blanche to the new institutions created by entrepreneurs and charter operators. She posted the following comment: The biggest player in making teacher preparation an “anything goes” job is our US Congress with the passage of ESSA. TITLE II—PREPARING, TRAINING, AND RECRUITING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHERS, PRINCIPALS, OR OTHER SCHOOL LEADERS is not just a bad joke for a title. [ 1172 more words. ]

http://dianeravitch.net/2016/07/08/laura-chapman-essa-and-the-degradation-of-teacher-preparation

Diane Ravitch's blog

Laura Chapman, retired arts consultant, predicts that the new “Every Student Succeeds Act” is a blow against professional teacher preparation. It offers carte blanche to the new institutions created by entrepreneurs and charter operators. She posted the following comment:

The biggest player in making teacher preparation an “anything goes” job is our US Congress with the passage of ESSA.

TITLE II—PREPARING, TRAINING, AND RECRUITING HIGH-QUALITY TEACHERS, PRINCIPALS, OR OTHER SCHOOL LEADERS is not just a bad joke for a title. It is cynically misleading.

ESSA marginalizes higher education’s role in teacher preparation. Scholarship is not required to prepare teachers or to be a teachers, or principal, or other school leader. All you need to do is be a producer of test scores as measures of “academic” achievement. All you have to do is let our governors expand the charter industry to teacher education by setting up an “authorizing entity” to…

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Dear Michigan Public School Teachers

“It is time for you to say this has gone far enough. You want your school district to be controlled by the community that knows it best and has elected officials to oversee it. You want to be treated with respect and fairness when it comes to compensation and to have the right to negotiate work conditions and salary with your employer without interference from Lansing bureaucrats who know nothing about your district and its priorities. You want your years of training and experience to count when pedagogical decisions are made for your students. Not the opinions of the fine people of Massachusetts. For the love of Bloom, Piaget, and Vygotsky can the testing and data collection of every pencil move, keyboard stroke, and eye blink of each student stop? Just stop. Let appropriate assessment guide appropriate instruction the way it has effectively done for as long as there have been educators, athletic coaches, and music instructors. You need to have the freedom – and time – to actually teach.

And you will teach. Despite it all you will teach – because I know you

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Dana Goldstein: Hillary Changes Direction from Obama on Education Policy

Dana Goldstein, veteran education journalist, reports that Hillary Clinton is striking a very different note with teachers and their unions than Obama did. Obama’s education policies were shaped to cut the power of unions and to reduce teachers’ job protections. His administration was openly hostile to public schools and teachers. In response to the hedge fund managers at Democrats for Education Reform, whose favorite he was, and to the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, the Obama administration invested heavily in privately managed charter schools and forced thousands of public schools to close, based on their test scores. [ 633 more words. ]

http://dianeravitch.net/2016/07/08/dana-goldstein-hillary-changes-direction-from-obama-on-education-policy

Diane Ravitch's blog

Dana Goldstein, veteran education journalist, reports that Hillary Clinton is striking a very different note with teachers and their unions than Obama did.

Obama’s education policies were shaped to cut the power of unions and to reduce teachers’ job protections. His administration was openly hostile to public schools and teachers. In response to the hedge fund managers at Democrats for Education Reform, whose favorite he was, and to the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, the Obama administration invested heavily in privately managed charter schools and forced thousands of public schools to close, based on their test scores. The burden of school closings fell mainly on poor communities of color, which were destabilized by his punitive policies.

Goldstein says that Hillary is taking a very different tack:

Clinton’s speech to the NEA was notable both for what she said and, perhaps even more so, for what she didn’t say. She…

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To: Bernie — From: #NotMeUs

To: Bernie — From: #NotMeUs
by John Laurits
Dear Bernie Sanders, I hope this letter finds you well & in good spirits — although, I understand that this may be a lot to hope for, given the amount of media pressure & slander that you are usually facing, particularly in these last few weeks. Anyway, I suppose that I should introduce myself… My name is Millions — you remember me, […]

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