If you open this link, you can see every state’s report card. This shows which states value their public schools. It shows which states resist privatization, which states finance their public schools adequately and equitably, which states encourage teacher professionalism, which states promote opportunity for all students.
Read about your state. It is on one page. Share it with your elected officials and school leaders.
The most important goal of the NPE report is to get the public and policymakers to understand what matters most in improving schools.
Our nation has pursued failed market-based policies for 15 years. It is time to do what works, based on evidence and experience.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a veteran New York State Public School Teacher, I am so very disappointed in the NYSED and even our leaders at NYSUT. There is so much talk about “genuine change” and “rebooting the process” and “listening” and “hearing” but ABSOLUTELY NO REAL CHANGE has reached the classroom.
While everyone from administrators, to union leaders, to governors, to State Education Department policy makers is touting Change, children in the classroom feel little of it.
In a few short months, students around the state in grades 3-8 will either be sitting for six days of unlimited hours of testing (now that the tests have become “un-timed,”) or they’ll be sitting doing not much of anything for that same amount of time. Either way, the process of instruction and learning in school will cease for them during that time.
I wish for more public outrage. From my union leaders, from my colleagues, from parents, from anyone who claims they care about children. (Lots of outrage, of course, in these blog pages…)
There is NOTHING substantial changing for the 2016 State testing season. Unless you determine that removing a handful of questions and giving students as much time as they want to take the tests, constitutes real change.
I am baffled and sad and stymied and perplexed. I am doubtful. I am probably cynical.
But I have not yet given up hope.
“Change,” I know you’re there, somewhere…
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That is why parents should support opt out. The testing machine supports the test and punish agenda, and the collection of data to feeds the Big Data monster. None of this improves outcomes for public schools or the students that attend them.
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Ohio revises number of “failing” charter schools- there are ten times as many as they claimed in an application for a federal grant.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/02/04/charter-school-federal-grant.html
They got the grant with the phony numbers, so apparently there is no oversight of charter schools in the Obama Administration either. Can’t ship that charter school money fast enough, I guess.
We’re still waiting for any of these “reformers” to turn their attention to Ohio public schools. We can’t seem to get them interested in the “traditionalist” sector other then when they’re demanding we turn our kids over for testing or when they’re cutting funding.
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I mean, come on:
“When ODE Applied for a Federal grant to expand even further the number of charter schools it Ohio, it lied on its application form. they were quickly caught, because no one was going to believe only 6 charter schools in the entire state were failing. Embarrassed and forced to correct their lies, the new wishful thinking number they have come up with is 57 – a 950% increase in failing charter schools in the state.
They have also cut the number of schools they claimed were successful by 50% – down to just a paltry 59.”
Is this entire state agency corrupt? Who reviews charter school grants in the Obama Administration and why didn’t they validate any of these claims?
http://www.jointhefuture.org/join-the-future/ode-understated-number-of-failing-charter-schools-by-950
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In searching for places to send information about the important NPE report, I found, a Lima, Ohio newspaper article related to Laura Chapman’s recent blog comments. Apparently there are two “Best-in-Class” locations (32 across the U.S.) recently opened in Mason and Lima, Ohio. The article doesn’t mention the funding from Gates (linked to Relay Graduate School of Education and Teacher Squared).
Gates, the richest man in America and a college dropout, appointed himself as the expert in how education can be enhanced.
In an Impatient Opportunist (“Optimist”) post, Nov. 20, 2015, the author, Brent Maddin asks, “Who Is best at ensuring every professor is high quality?” Members of the public, who understand U.S. oligarch dominion, shout out, “not Lord Bill”.
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I’m disappointed that Washington DC didn’t merit an entry. We have more people than either Wyoming or Vermont, and a lot of unfortunate recent edu-history had been made here, in my home town. Guy
Sent from my iPhone
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Guy Brandenburg,
DC is definitely included. Check the national report
I will look at state reports to be sure
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