Test-and-Punish Just Hangs on as Failed Education Strategy

by janresseger
ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, is like an old, altered, jacket, now frayed at the cuffs. The fabric was never really good in the first place and, when the jacket was made over, the alternations didn’t do much to improve the design. Not much noticed at the back of the closet, the jacket sags there. But it would take too much energy to throw it away.

Pretty much everybody agrees these days that the 2001 school “reform” law, No Child Left Behind, was a failure. The Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos went to the American Enterprise Institute the other day and criticized the education policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

And at the other end of the political spectrum, on January 8, 2018, the 16th anniversary of the day President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind, Diane Ravitch declared,

janresseger

ESSA, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, is like an old, altered, jacket, now frayed at the cuffs. The fabric was never really good in the first place and, when the jacket was made over, the alternations didn’t do much to improve the design. Not much noticed at the back of the closet, the jacket sags there. But it would take too much energy to throw it away.

Pretty much everybody agrees these days that the 2001 school “reform” law, No Child Left Behind, was a failure. The Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos went to the American Enterprise Institute the other day and criticized the education policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

And at the other end of the political spectrum, on January 8, 2018, the 16th anniversary of the day President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind, Diane Ravitch declared, “NCLB, as it…

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Amazon says No to Grand Rapids and the Right Place Inc. will still not make the proposal public

Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy

Yesterday, it was reported that the online sales giant Amazon, has narrowed down their list of cities to twenty and Grand Rapids is not on the list.

MLive reported, “Although we were not selected to advance in this process, we take great pride in how the greater Grand Rapids area was presented to Amazon and the collaborative work that went into it,” said Birgit Klohs, president and CEO of the Right Place economic development program. 

MLive went on to say, “The Right Place team included Downtown Grand Rapids, Inc., the city of Grand Rapids, the Michigan Department of Transportation, Gerald R. Ford International Airport, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and Gov. Rick Snyder’s office.”

Considering that the City of Grand Rapids was involved in the process, one would think that the 108 page proposal from Grand Rapids to Amazon would have been a public document. Not so.

I inquired…

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