Bad ideas travel fast. Britain has a conservative government, and its education minister is looking to the US to find a leader for OFSTED.
The Sunday Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, says that the chief inspectorate should be a charter leader.
Eva Moskowitz? Chris Barbic? Joel Klein? Kevin Huffman? Michelle Rhee?
Take your pick.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When you see the last frames in this, you will know why
http://www.utrend.tv/v/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact/
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Arnie Duncan is looking for a job…and as a former basketball player in Australia, he has a bit of a handle on how Socialism can work…or is there a whole new thrust in Britain, to Americanize and privatize everything?
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Ah, now you get it… did you know that there is a plan to privatize air control.
NY Times this week! And they want to get all the equipment for free. The did it in Britain, and the expenses were passed on to the airline consumer… of course.
Next, we will have to pay for our traffic lights.
If they could, they would privatize the air.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
WoW!!….Stupid is as Stupid Does
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They can have them all. I’ll even pay their airfare. Adios.
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They would all be better if we booked them a nice cabin on the Titanic.
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Good point. In steerage.
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yep…that wold be a good place for them
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Can we also book rooms for Scott Walker, Sam Brownback, Jeb Bush, Rick Perry, John Kasich, the Walton family, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and any other meddling rich person.
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Stranger than fiction: You can sail in the new Titanic II in 2018
http://boingboing.net/2016/02/15/titanic-ii-is-an-exact-replica.html
“Titanic II looks virtually identical to the Belfast-built liner that sank in April 1912 after smashing into an iceberg on its maiden voyage, but its modern improvements and hyper-vigilant staff should ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself. That’s the plan anyway.
The ship is four metres wider than the original (in order to meet modern maritime safety regulations) and the hull will be welded rather than riveted. It will sell first, second and third class tickets, have 9 floors and 840 cabins and will accommodate 2,400 passengers and 900 crew members. It will also contain Turkish baths, a swimming pool and gyms.”
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Is there a “rowing room” in the bottom where we can send all these lovely “rheeformers”? Maybe we can shackle them to the hull.
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OFSTED is already going around schools telling the the teachers to change their ways.In the Tony Blair (PM) era England was being described as the 51st state !
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I feel like the US and the UK adopt every bad idea at the same time. You could really run down a list- everything from Iraq to financial sector deregulation to public school privatization.
It must be the common language 🙂
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According to The Telegraph (newspaper), Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, is looking at bringing in an expert from overseas to be the next chief inspector of English schools to replace Sir Michael Wilshaw. The Telegraph says that favorite candidates from the US are:
1. Dave Levin, co-founder of the KIPP network of more than 180 “high-performing” charters schools, and (hold your hat)
2. Doug Lemov, head of a chain of charter schools in New York, and (hold your hat)
3. Eva Moskowitz, chief executive of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York, and (hold your hat)
4. Joel Klein, who as chancellor of the New York schools district took on the teaching unions.
“Mrs. Morgan believes the new chief inspector needs a track record of pushing through education reforms against resistance from unions, whether experience was garnered in this country or abroad. “
Downing Street reportedly supports the international search for a “radically different leader” of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills).
http://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ ..
Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers said; “If the government is scouring the world for a new head of Ofsted, they should look to Finland.”… “It is universally agreed to have an excellent education system characterized by co-operation, collaboration and trust – a far cry from the Charter School ethos of the US.”
Lucy Powell, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said: “We should be looking to the best examples internationally…to improve school standards.“
“The key ingredient to raising standards is enough high quality teachers in our classrooms…. Ministers are failing to recruit and retain enough teachers, threatening our future economic success and the prospects of young people in the global education race.”
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/12156541/Ministers-looking-abroad-for-new-chief-inspector-of-schools.html
That all narrative sounds familiar, but the plot thickens.
Major sub-contractors for Ofsted inspections of educational programs, including the Tribal Group, lost contracts in May 2014. Tribal Group’s stock dropped. But by 2015, Tribal Group had been reinstated with a contract as Inspector for southern England and London. Why should this factoid be of interest?
1. Tribal Group is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It is a leading provider of technology products and training services to education, and it operates internationally, including the US.
2. The Gates Foundation is funding an “Inspectorate” system for teacher preparation based on the Tribal Group’s method but with criteria supplied by the National Center for Teacher Quality. This 33 month 2015 grant to “Teacher Prep Inspection — US, Inc. is for $3,248,182.
3. Among the “experts” enlisted to shape and approve the criteria for the National Center for Teacher Quality’s ratings (published in US News and World Report) and now to be part of the Gates-funded Inspectorate are:
Sir Michael Barber, Chief Education Advisor, for Pearson International—publisher of texts, tests K-12, and teacher education, including on-line learning.
Doug Lemov, Managing Director of “The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices” project for Uncommon (charter) Schools, trustee of the New York Charter Schools Association and of KIPP Tech Valley Charter School. Author of Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. Lemov is known for propagating the extremely authoritarian teaching techniques used in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools.
Merideth Liben, Director of Literacy and English Language Arts for Student Achievement Partners. Liben worked on the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and developed tools for analyzing text “complexity,” mathematical formulas and rules for selecting texts that comply with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Recall that that the Gates Foundation financed those standards. Only eight states are using the Common Core as written, nineteen have “re-branded” them.” More on the technical panel at NCQT at http://www.nctq.org/teacherPrep/review2014/ourApproach/whoWeAre/technicalPanel.jsp#318
4. If you work in teacher education, you should know that Inspections have already been piloted in the US. In 2013, Dr. Edward Crowe, co-founder of Teacher Preparation Analytics, managed the first pilots of the inspection process, modeled on the Tribal Group’s British inspection system. Crowe continues this work, leading the Gates-funded work Teacher Prep Inspection-US (TPI-US).
Here is an overview of the US Inspectorate process, also showing the clear connection to criteria from NCTQ, notorious for their prescriptions that pretend to be based on research, http://www.iacte.net/files/Inspectorate%20Model%20Overview%201.31.14.docx
5. In the US Inspectorate— US (TPI-US)— higher education faculty in teacher education are excluded from the process except for being subjected to extensive surveillance and being “cooperative” in providing information as requested. Inspectors fault programs that fail to track the test scores produced by their graduates and have the equivalent of customer satisfaction reports from their graduates and employers of their graduates (among much else).
You can get an idea of the process used in the 2013 inspections here. https://secure.aacte.org/apps/rl/res_get.php?fid=835&ref=rl
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Joel Klein…the zombie who ran NYC schools into the ground…. PERFECT.
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OFSTED = Orgiastic F#$^%% Standards and Testing Educational Disease??
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Campbell…Brown NOSE? (You know, the one married to the Pro-Iraq Invasion Shill for George W. Bush who then went on to work with hedge funders on Wall Street?)
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Dan Senor is her husband.
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