Where does your representative rank among small donors?

• By Karl Evers-Hillstrom 
• March 21, 2019

As the 2020 primary heats up, candidates are touting not just how much they’ve raised but also how many people have contributed to the campaign. A new page from the Center for Responsive Politics reveals how much candidates receive from small individual contributions. Read More

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/03/where-does-your-representative-rank-among-small-donors/

 

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Let’s “turn the ship around” on education policy

by Mitchell Robinson

A lot of public school advocates have become pretty disillusioned trying to find a politician from either party who seems to actually “get it” when it comes to public education. So many teachers and parents are yearning for a candidate who supports traditional public schools, recognizes charter schools as an expensive, unnecessary, and dangerous distraction, and reject all efforts to privatize our schools via vouchers, or “education tax credits,” or “education freedom scholarships,” or any other patriotic-sounding euphemism the neo-liberal ed reformers come up with.

But who are our options?

Cory Booker? No.

Beto O’Rourke? No.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders? Unclear.

So, reading this recap of a recent meeting of public school parents and activists in New York City was an astonishingly fresh breath of air. I’m sure it didn’t hurt that Diane Ravitch, perhaps the most vocal defender of public schools, teachers, and students today, was on the panel:

READ-SHARE-DISCUSS-LEARN more here – https://www.eclectablog.com/2019/03/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-lets-turn-the-ship-around-on-education-policy.html

 

Author: Mitchell Robinson Mitchell Robinson is an associate professor and chair of music education at Michigan State University. His research is focused on music education and education policy. Follow him on Facebook HERE and Twitter at @mrobmsu. His own blog is at MitchellRobinson.net.

If We Want To Boost Reading Scores, We Need To Change Reading Tests

Natalie Wexler

Forbes Magazine Senior Contributor

Education –I write about retooling K-12 education to address social inequality.

Test scores show American students have made no progress in reading for two decades, and experts are speculating on the cause of the stagnation. Here’s one reason that few have focused on: the nature of standardized reading tests themselves.

Last week, scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress—often referred to as the NAEP, or The Nation’s Report Card—revealed that about two-thirds of students across the country scored below the “proficient” level on reading tests administered in 2017. The even worse news is that the figure hasn’t changed since 1998.

Education policy wonks have been trying to come up with explanations. Maybe we haven’t been spending enough money on education, or perhaps we’re not holding schools and teachers sufficiently accountable for low scores. Maybe it’s deepening levels of poverty. But what if the reason for the flat scores is that by putting so much emphasis on reading tests, we’ve been undermining our own efforts?

Parents and teachers have complained loudly for years about the way testing has come to dominate the curriculum. The NAEP itself can’t be held responsible for that, because it carries no real consequences. But the yearly state tests that have been mandated since the No Child Left Behind law went into effect in 2002 have had significant consequences—and a huge impact on instruction.

The influence of testing goes far beyond one big end-of-year test. Beginning in the earliest grades, students also take tests throughout the school year that are supposed to predict their performance on the big tests. And they spend many hours on activities designed to prepare them for tests.

READ-SHARE-DISCUSS-LEARN more here – https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2018/04/15/if-we-want-to-boost-reading-scores-we-need-to-change-reading-tests/#16190448495a

Thank you to Leighton Township Library

Thank you to Leighton Township Library for their donation of books for our Little Free Libraries! If you or your organization would like to donate books, contact Susan at shenderson@acuw.org .

https://www.acuw.org/

Students Bring Problems of Trump’s America with Them When They Come to School

janresseger

Mike Rose, the education writer and UCLA professor of education who has profiled vital and challenging American classrooms, the work of teachers, and the role of public schools to extend opportunity, added a post to his blog this week about new research from a group of his colleagues at UCLA:  School and Society in the Age of Trump.

Rose explains why he believes this report is so important: “Schools are porous institutions—what happens in society at large plays out in classrooms and hallways—so the disturbing findings of a masterful new report, School and Society in the Age of Trump should not surprise us.  But they do, in their scope and severity. John Rogers and his colleagues (Michael Ishimoto, Alexander Kwako, Anthony Berryman, and Claudia Diera) at UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access surveyed a representative sample of over 500 public high school principals from across the country and…

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