In the mountains of southwestern Virginia, Gequetta Bright Laney taught public high school students this spring about a subject of keen interest to the region’s biggest employer: the economics of coal mining. “Where there’s coal, there’s opportunity,” Bright Laney told her class at Coeburn High School in Wise County. Her lessons, like others in dozens of public schools across the country, were approved and funded by the coal industry. Such efforts reflect a broader pattern of private-sector attempts to influence what gets taught in public schools. Read full article > >

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Energy industry shapes lessons in public schools

The FBI, police and paramedics scrambled throughout the District on Thursday afternoon chasing reports of letters containing a suspicious white powder and mailed to 29 D.C. public schools in all quadrants of the city, authorities said. Initial tests found no toxic substance in the items that arrived in office areas and mailrooms, and “no students have been in danger at any point,” said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and EMS Department. Piringer said that as of late Thursday afternoon, nobody at the locations had to be treated or taken to a hospital. Read full article > >

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Letters with white powder sent to D.C. schools; substance not thought to be toxic

The FBI, police and paramedics scrambled throughout the District on Thursday afternoon chasing reports of letters containing a suspicious white powder and mailed to 29 D.C. public schools in all quadrants of the city, authorities said. Initial tests found no toxic substance in the items that arrived in office areas and mailrooms, and “no students have been in danger at any point,” said Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and EMS Department. Piringer said that as of late Thursday afternoon, nobody at the locations had to be treated or taken to a hospital. Read full article > >

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Letters with white powder sent to D.C. schools; substance not thought to be toxic

Ousted after just 95 days on the job as chancellor of New York City public schools, former Hearst Magazines boss Cathie Black has opened up about her brief stint in the realm of education. Addressing whether heading America’s largest public school…

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Cathie Black: ‘I’m a Warrior’

On May 31, 2010, Governor Chris Christie’s New Jersey Privatization Task Force reported that more than $210 million would be saved by privatizing work that had traditionally been performed by government workers. The report even set out specific figures for some of the cost savings it identified, while others said savings were “TBD” – “To Be Decided”. read more

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Fuzzy Privatization Math

More than three-quarters of the nation’s public schools could soon be labeled “failing” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration said Wednesday as it increased efforts to revamp the signature education initiative of President George W. Bush.

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Most schools could face ‘failing’ label under No Child Left Behind, Duncan says

Detroit schools might start to look like college lecture halls soon. State education officials ordered the emergency financial manager of Detroit Public Schools to close half the city’s schools and consolidate the students. The emergency plan would…

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Detroit School Shutdown Looms

Just like billionaires who donate to public schools, donors want transparency and accountability from educators.

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Donors Demanding a Bigger Voice in Catholic Schools

Tucson, Ariz. -

Shael Polakow-Suransky, who comes in with Cathleen Black at New York Public Schools, talks testing : “Until we start seeing assessments that ask kids to write research papers, ask them to solve unfamiliar problems, ask them to defend their ideas, ask them to engage with both fiction and nonfiction texts; until those kinds of assessments are our state assessments, all we’re measuring are basic skills,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said in an interview… Mr. Polakow-Suransky acknowledges that the tests are imperfect, but says they are a necessary measurement tool. “To put it very simply,” he said, “how do you know that the kids are learning?”  In 2004, Mr. Nadelstern made him his deputy in the Office of New Schools, and Mr. Polakow-Suransky moved on to become chief academic officer and a deputy chancellor overseeing instruction before becoming chief accountability officer in 2009.  He has also been in charge of the city’s roll-out of the new national standards for what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school, with more emphasis on writing and critical thinking. That is where the new tests would come in.  He has been working with officials from New York and other states to create a new kind of testing that would include essays, classroom projects and multiple-choice exams, and that would be administered in stages, perhaps at four times during the year.  He described one prototype question. Students would be asked to calculate the diameter that a straw needs to fit through a juice box’s hole, then write to a juice box manufacturer whose straws keep getting stuck in the hole to explain why its diameter should be changed. “It’s a ninth-grade problem that involves geometry and algebra in an unfamiliar context,” and tests several skills at once, he said. This is rather heartening. I was talking to Samori yesterday about something he did to another student last week (I’m not saying what because, at this point, he’s really embarrassed, as he should be). Anyway, I was asking him why he thought it was wrong, and he basically was repeating back to me what I’d told him. After a bit, I cut him off and told him that he needs to work to a point where he can articulate his own moral standards in his own terms, as opposed to my terms.  The bottom line, is I want him to think critically about morality–and everything else. My hope has always been that the public schools would support that kind of critical thinking. We found that in elementary but I’m worried about middle school. It’s good to see someone coming in who sees testing in that way, who leaves room for critical and creative–and even practical–thinking. Knowledge as an abstraction killed me in school.

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Testing I Can Believe In

Politicians, anti-public intellectuals and conservative-leaning media pundits no longer ask what kind of education is needed in a democratic society. Nor do they value the importance of educating teachers and students to think critically, engage in meaningful dialogue and function as producers of knowledge rather than as objects of its transmission. Curiously, given the disastrous state of the economy since its 2008 meltdown, the leadership driving the new reform movement in education are hedge fund managers, multimillionaires, read more

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Selling Out New York City’s Public Schools: Mayor Bloomberg, David Steiner and the Politics of Corporate "Leadership"

Cathleen P. Black, picked to lead New York City’s public schools, is a publishing pioneer with little education experience.

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A Trailblazer With Her Eye on the Bottom Line

Joel Klein, the chancellor of New York City public schools, is resigning his post to join Rupert Murdoch at News Corp. Klein, who will serve as a senior adviser to Murdoch, served New York City during the crucial and experimental period following the…

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Joel Klein to Leave NYC Schools Post

D.C. public schools have started serving an early dinner to an estimated 10,000 students, many of whom are now receiving three meals a day from the system as it expands efforts to curb childhood hunger and poor nutrition.

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Dinner bell follows class bell at some D.C. schools

Although the acclaimed documentary Waiting for “Superman” and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark’s public schools has focused the media’s attention on America’s education system, there’s still a crisis going on in public…

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How to Fix Our Schools: Manifesto