Retired teacher Guy Brandenburg went to the National Press Club to observe the official release of the NAEP scores for 2017, released one year after the tests were offered in every state to samples of students.
His judgment: NAEP 2017 demonstrates the failure of what has been called “Reform” since the signing of NCLB in 2002 and the hiring of Michelle Rhee as autocratic chancellor of D.C.
”In the morning session, presenters acknowledged that for the nation as a whole, reading scores are flat – essentially unchanged — after 25 years of various types of ‘reforms’. Panelists tried to explain why, and seemed to me to give just about diametrically-opposed solutions to the problem. The introductory presenter (whom we saw on tape), essentially blamed us adults for not letting kids see us read often and deeply enough, and said that if we just wish harder, the results will come. (not quite a direct quote, but close)
“I did a quick appraisal of how Washington DC’s scores have improved (or not) before and after mayoral control, which was imposed shortly after students took the 2007 NAEP. You may recall that Michelle Rhee was imposed as DC’s first education Chancellor. She and her henchwoman, Kaya Henderson (who succeeded Rhee) predicted, in writing, all sorts of miraculous gains that would come if they were free to fire teachers en masse and subject them to rigorous numerical control via IMPACT and VAM.
“None of it came to pass.
“With today’s data it is even clearer than ever. I found 16 separate subcategories of students for which I could easily find data. Of them, improvements were better BEFORE mayoral control for 12 of them, and in only 4 was the improvement slightly better AFTER mayoral control.
“That’s a three-to-one vote against mayoral control and the whole educational Reformster movement.
“In other cities and jurisdictions, it’s more of the same. The imposition of Common Core curriculum, along with SBAC and PARCC testing and the like, has in fact made the gaps between high-achievers and low-achievers wider than ever.”
This is what failure looks like. Watch the excuses come pouring out.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I do not want to watch the excuses. Sorry. I recall the stern lectures about teachers with their lousy excuses and how we were failing the children who,would just learn if we did what our latest fad administors and professors were selling. I am close to wanting what Marat called for from the French Royalists. Heads. Not literally, of course, but we need to round up everybody who refuses to acknowledge the failure of testing and get them all a job at a chicken farm. There they can shovel manure like I used to and get a feeling for what happens when the things of earth that creep like mites and political insects infest your body.
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Roy,
I would be satisfied to see every reformer required to teach for a month. Including Betsy Billionaire.
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I want to take that idea one step further and send them to teach in Afghanistan, Syria or Iran.
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Some of the lying corporate reformers of public education will blame the teachers unions or should I say continue to blame the teachers unions?
Since anytime one of these corrupt, greedy, lying Alt Right haters of democracy and the public sector run out of things or people to blame, they fall back to blaming the labor unions for just about every problem in the country even though the “vast” majority of workers don’t belong to labor unions.
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Lloyd,
The alt-right blames the unions even in right to work states. Reminds me of when I went to Poland in 1989. There were people complaining about the Jews even after they were all gone.
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all while so many of those who loudly and endlessly blame teachers and their unions still adamantly send their own kids off to a local neighborhood public school
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Those adult serial blamers are often helicopter parents that make impossible demands on their child’s teachers and/or the public schools that cannot be delivered due to rules or lack of funds.
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