“All I really need to know I learned in smoke-filled back rooms.” (apologies to Robert Fulghum)
0. *****Always accept grant money from Bill Gates.****
1. Test everything that moves (even the classroom goldfish)
2. Play with cut scores.
3. Don’t hit teachers (Just fire them)
4. Always leave things in more chaos than when you found them.
5. NEVER (EVER!!) CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
6. Never admit you are wrong and never (ever!) say you are sorry.
7. Wash your hands of everything that goes wrong.
8. Flush after each school closing.
9. VAMs and failings (students, teachers, schools) are good.
10. Unions and teacher independence and creativity in the classroom are bad.
11. Mandate a Fair and Balanced (TM) curriculum – teaching some Common Core math and some close reading and never (ever) allowing students to draw or paint or sing or dance or play or go out for recess and making sure they do a minimum of 4 hours homework every day (especially in kindergarten)
12. Take a shot of whiskey every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for Diane Ravitch, hold secret meetings, and stick together.
14. Beware the American Statistical Association. Remember Vergara: The student test scores go down and the teacher firings go up and nobody really knows how or why, but we all like that.
15. Statistics and standardized tests and VAMs – they all lie. So do we.
16. And then remember the Common Core books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – Test”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Brilliant ….again.
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Here’s some good news:
“Toledo Public Schools, against the odds and despite formidable obstacles such as child poverty, continues to improve the quality of education it provides its 22,000 students. District voters who want to maintain that vital progress will vote FOR Issue 1, the reasonable property tax increase that TPS seeks on next month’s ballot.”
Toledo was flooded with unregulated charter schools over the last decade, but TPS enrollment is up, not down.
“Against the odds” is right. It’s amazing how resilient public schools are. Despite a Bush-Obama federal climate that was and is hostile to existing public schools and Governor Kasich, who gutted public school funding while expanding charter and private school state funding, public schools keep chugging along.
Hopefully the levy will pass to replace the funding public schools lost under Obama/Kasich. . It’s tough to pass a levy in Ohio amid the “public schools suck!” din at the federal and state level, but I’m pulling for them.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Featured-Editorial-Home/2014/10/12/Vote-for-TPS-tax.html
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Test is a four letter word.
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Thanks resident poet! Here’s just a few more (of many I am sure)…
17. Remember.. do not utter a word to the public without the advice of a “Gates-paid” PR firm to create glossy branding of your message.
18. Make sure top-down policy creates such great frustration among veteran teachers that they leave. Then more money can be spent on testing and less on their salaries and benefits (remember veteran teacher = more money needed in the school budget to pay for salary).
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19. Remember “kids do not count” but their future economic productivity for the corporate world does… so control them, control them and control them… “test u cate” them not “educate” them.
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I am honored to have that appear in a post.
Thanks to others for the additions. keep em coming. Perhaps they can all be collected and delivered to the White House. Ironically, it’s actually a very long list (and seems to grow by the day).
I would change the title though, to “All I really need to know about education reform I learned in the Rose garden.”
Reformers obviously missed out on Kindergarten* (where most people learn the most important lessons in life) and have lived their entire lives in the Rose Garden (both figuratively and literally) (*undoubtedly because o f their high SAT scores)
And now, their policiies will ensure that a whole generation of American kids miss out on kindergarten as well.
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Sell your soul (and your teachers {evaluation based on students’ test scores} and sound pedagogy {“personalized learning” – read that $$$ for technology}) for Race to the Top (or is that bottom?) money.
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