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Great Britain: School Privatization Run Amok

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2019 //
6

 

 

Thanks to Leonie Haimson for sending along this paper. The “academy” concept began under a Conservative government that believed private enterprise was infinitely wiser than public anything. Corporations and wealthy individuals were encouraged to “buy” control of schools by putting up a large sum. Things seem to going swimmingly for the idea. This is a small excerpt. When I was part of the Koret Task Force at the rightwing Hoover Institution, we journeyed to England as a group to learn about this example of privatization in action.

The paper contains a valuable review of “related party transactions,” that is, financial self-dealing in the private entities that receive public funding in the U.S. and Great Britain.

 

Charter Schools, Academy Schools, and Related-Party Transactions: Same Scams, Different Countries

Preston C. Green III and Chelsea E. Connery

 

Academies were first introduced in 2000 as the City Academy Program. 34 City academies were to

replace locally run schools in urban areas that were deemed to be failing by the school inspection

body Ofsted, or that were underachieving. The Education Act 2002 permitted academies to open

outside of urban areas.

 

Eight years later, Parliament enacted the Academies Act 2010. This statute extended the academy

option, until then limited to struggling schools, to include successful schools at both the primary

and secondary levels. The government financed conversion costs and provided considerable

financial incentives to encourage schools to convert. The number of academies increased

dramatically as a result of these policy changes. In 2010, there were 203 academies throughout

England, all of them serving secondary schools with high proportions of disadvantaged students.40

As of September 2018, there were 8,177 academies, constituting 36% of England’s state funded

schools. About 66% of England’s secondary schools and 30% of its primary schools have achieved

academy status.

 

https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=288029089119124077071072023002029091103043056088031004087020092093070127089006103068017098101006051012034021074006121068019013122090028033029003084118011099077099015084017084101118003105028109069085121099080067081097099083066095083111127031029112103001&EXT=pdf

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, International, Privatization

Peg Tyre: What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in Japan

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2019 //
15

 

Veteran journalist Peg Tyre is on a study mission to understand education in certain Asian nations. She has written several reports, some of which were posted here. She has written to tell me that she has enjoyed the feedback from readers of this blog, so keep those emails and reactions to her coming.
A teacher in a primary school giving a healthy-living lesson
Japanese Teachers Put In Longer Hours Than Any Other Teachers on the Planet
“Being a teacher is like being a 7-11. Open 24 hours.”
Here’s the project: The Japanese government, like many Asian countries with high performing schools, wants to educate students to become more innovative and creative in order to compete with AI and participate more fully in a global economy. They are promoting English language instruction (with an emphasis on speaking), creativity, self-expression, meta-cognition, critical thinking and problem-solving. I’m on a research trip in Japan to find out more.
Thanks to all the folks (and especially teachers!) emailing me questions and sharing reflections. Very inspiring. Keep those emails coming.
You Asked: What’s It Like To Be a Public School Teacher in Japan?
So I Looked Into It!
Answer: They Get a Ton of Respect But the Hours Are Crippling.
And lots of teachers fear the push to change schools is going to make those hours even worse.
The Good Part: It takes time and determination to teach in a public school in Japan. You need a college degree with an emphasis on education, a supervised practicum and you need to get a license and renew it every few years. The job application process is highly selective and only the best candidates land jobs. Once you get a job, you are encouraged to collaborate with your fellow teachers, and do a great deal of observation of other classrooms. Professional development is considered necessary for everyone.
Being a public school teacher in Japan is a prestigious job. You are entrusted to look after the academic, social and emotional lives of students as individuals and also foster group harmony, so people consider you a moral beacon. You teach kids life skills (like brushing teeth), help them navigate socially, help direct their careers and even do a little ad hoc family counseling.
Unlike in the US, where reformers often suggest that kids in low-performing schools would learn more if teachers were smarter, better educated or more dedicated, Japanese people regard the teachers in their local public school as something akin to a pastor or a doctor in a local clinic. The government appreciates you. Parents don’t criticize you. And school administrators are pretty supportive as well. The pay is pretty decent, definitely enough to live a middle class life.
The Bad Part: The hours are shockingly long.
In 2006, primary school teacher worked 53.16 hours a week.
In 2016, primary school teachers worked a whopping 57.29 hours per week.
Senior teachers and vice principals have even it worse.
In 2006, they reported working 59.05 hours a week.
In 2016, they logged 63.8 hours per week.
That includes teaching time, supervising clubs and activities after school, counseling, lesson planning, grading and preparing materials. Teachers also take their students on class trips on Saturdays.
In the Japanese context, working long hours is considered a virtue. But karoshi, literally working yourself to death, has become a big social problem in many sectors of the economy in Japan. And teachers are not immune.
Makamura Kunihiko is a veteran teacher and now principal at Sapporo Fushimi junior high school. (His photo is below) In an interview a few days ago, he told me that among his staff, about 20% of his teachers, usually parents of young kids, leave at 5 pm. About 20% of the teachers in his school stay until midnight– working.
Good Lord! What Does the Union Say? The responsibilities of the job, they point out, are unsustainable. And in the last few years, the number of people who say they want to be teachers is dropping. “Teachers are worn out. To keep ourselves healthy and to make sure we have enough [bandwidth] to communicate with students, we need to address the issue of overwork,” says Tamaki Terazawa, head of international affairs for the Japan Teachers’ Union.
The government has responded by asking schools to get community members to run after school programs and supervise class trips to shorten a teacher’s work day. And that is starting to happen. The government also capped the hours teachers can work but that’s a pretty toothless initiative since unpaid overtime falls into that gray area made up of what you are required to do and what you think should do. And teachers in Japan (and workers in Japan in general) don’t have many models for work-life balance.
A Day in the Life of as Japanese Public School Teacher:
8:15 am….. start work.
4:45 pm…. formal school day ends.
5:00 pm….supervise clubs or activities.
6:00 pm……teacher team meetings.
8:00 pm…… grading and lesson planning.
Weekend….. teachers often supervise class trips.
NEXT UP: Readers prompt me to think more deeply about who gets to be creative. How? And Why?
Interested in reading what I’ve discovered so far?
Newsletter 1: In The Beginning
You can take an active role in shaping this project. Please send me questions, observations, research, history and personal reflections about your own teaching and learning, thoughts about rote learning and your ideas about what makes an innovator. Tell me what you want to know from my reporting. Twitter: @pegtyre or email: pegtyre1@gmail.com
Also, if you know of someone who might be interested in being part of this project, kindly send me their email and I’ll add them to the mailing list.
My trip is made possible by a generous Abe Fellowship for Journalists (administered by the Social Science Research Council.) I retain full editorial control. I also appreciate the moral support of my colleagues at the EGF Accelerator, an incubator for education-related nonprofits.
Education in Japan/S.Korea
Sent by pegtyre1@gmail.com in collaboration with
Categories Education Reform, International, Teachers

Peg Tyre in Japan: When Getting the Right Answer is the Wrong Answer

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2019 //
9

 

Veteran journalist Peg Tyre is in Japan right now, trying to learn more about their efforts to reform schools. She loves feedback from you.
Will “Spinach” Stop Japanese Schools From Teaching Kids in A Way That Promotes Innovation?
Here’s the project: The governments in Japan and South Korea say they want to educate students to become more innovative and creative in order to participate more fully in the global economy. They are promoting English language instruction (with an emphasis on speaking), self-expression, critical thinking and problem-solving. I’m on a research trip to those countries to find out more.
In my last newsletter, I asked for help. And I got it! I’ve been astonished (and delighted) by how many teachers, policymakers, researchers, students, and school administrators have reached out to share their reflections about the kind of teaching that produces innovators, what’s changing, the challenges, the opportunity, and potential for transformation in the U.S and in Japan. Again, thank you! Keep those emails coming (Pegtyre1@gmail.com)
Progress: I’ve been spending time with teachers, administrators and policy makers. A few days ago, I interviewed an educator, Joe Hug, who has a unique perspective on the school-to-workplace pipeline in Japan.
After working as a teacher and university professor, Hug started a consulting firm that helps Japanese teachers of English (junior high school, high school, and college) who are under pressure to create classrooms less dependent on rote learning. He also helps prepare university students to become more active learners so they can enroll and thrive in prestigious business school program in the West. He has a gig with two large, well-known Japanese companies (including a division of Mitsubishi) teaching “global competency” to their junior employees. 
Hug, who is married to Reiko Hug, a Hiroshima native, says the biggest blocker to the government’s efforts to produce a culture of innovation might be “spinach.” 
What Does That Mean? It’s a loose translation of the mnemonic Ho-Ren-So,which sounds like the Japanese word for that leafy green. In practice it works like this: “Hokoku” means report everything that happens to your superior. “Renraku” means to relate all the pertinent facts (absent opinion and conjecture) to your superior. And “sodan” mean to consult or discuss all your work with your boss and your team-members. Ho-Ren-So was popularized in the 1980s by the Japanese executive and author Tomiji Yamazaki, who put the catchy name on this deeply held set of interlocking cultural values which prize collaboration, caution, and stability over risk-taking and creative problem-solving. To the Western eye, Ho-Ren-So in the workplace can look like repetitive back and forth with your team. Or having a micromanaging boss. To be clear, he wasn’t suggesting that tired ethnic cliche of “groupthink” but something more subtle: a learned aversion to “getting it wrong.”
What Does This Have to Do With Schooling? Ho-Ren-So reflects a set of norms that are reinforced in the early grades of nearly every Japanese school. Children are taught to collaborate. They are asked to follow directions precisely. And respond to questions with what the teacher has determined is the correct answer. It’s the opposite of “working well independently” which is actually something U.S. schools prize. (And a comment your parents might have read about you on your report card.) And it couldn’t be more different from the mantra of our latest crop of Silicon Valley billionaires –“move fast and break things” (which clearly has its own downside.) It’s about teaching and learning in a way to produce the answer that is expected.
Here’s Hug: “The Japanese school system is great but it focusses on teaching kids to come up with the right answer, the one that is required of them. But that’s not the modern world.” In the modern world, he says, students need to figure out “what are the possibilities.” It’s difficult to teach students that way, says Hug, when students don’t want to be seen as “getting it wrong.” 
These days, teachers are being challenged, says Hug, to create and support a classroom culture that’s flexible enough for students to make a mistake and recover from it. Where “getting it wrong’ is part of the process of getting it right. And “teachers feel abandon,” says Hug. Most didn’t learn that way. The “spinach” culture of Japan doesn’t support it. And teachers aren’t sure how to pull it off.  
Your Thoughts? Have you ever encountered “spinach” in Japanese schools or companies? How exactly are teachers in Japan going to be managing this transition? Do we have a version of that in the U.S.? Here’s a big question: Can fear of failure co-exist with innovation? I’d like to hear from you.
Know of someone who might be interested in this conversation? Send me their email.
My trip is made possible by a generous Abe Fellowship for Journalist (administered by the Social Science Research Council.) I retain full editorial control. I also appreciate the moral support of my colleagues at the EGF Accelerator, an incubator for education-related nonprofits in Manhattan.

Categories Innovation, International, Teachers and Teaching

Peg Tyre: Teaching Creativity in Japan

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2019 //
34

Peg Tyre is a veteran education journalist who is currently tracking the path of education reform in Japan. She reminds me of something that I learned when I visited schools in other countries. Education officials and teachers wonder how Americans are able to teach their students creativity, critical thinking, imagination. While we obsess over test scores, other nations are awed by our students’ inquisitiveness, their ability to speak out and ask questions instead of regurgitating facts.
Teaching Japanese Students To Be Curious and Creative.
“I see that all this time they have kept this inside. Now it is pouring out.”
I recently spent the day at a seminar in Tokyo where about 50 teachers from public, private and after-school programs gathered to learn how to bring curiosity and creativity in their classrooms.
Unlike the usual government-run teacher-training programs, the participants are paying for this course out-of -pocket (and on their day off) because they are under pressure. The government, which determines what knowledge and skills are taught, is changing the national curriculum to stress creativity, critical thinking, and self-expression. That’s on top of a detailed subject knowledge of history, Japanese, science, math, and English. Next year, the all-important college entrance exam (the “Center Test”) will be changing, too. The goal? To spark a new generation of Japanese innovators.
Teachers in Japan say they need to learn new ways to teach in order to meet the new standards.
So they signed up for this seven-month course offered by a nonprofit group called Learning Creator’s Lab, which brings together corporations and individuals in creative fields to help guide the teachers. Today, a representative from the Japanese advertising giant Dentsu is addressing the group. Dentsu has opened a lucrative side-business promoting creativity to corporate clients and is hoping to gain traction in schools. Later, a filmmaker will address the teachers, too.
The big idea this morning, explains Sato Fujiwara, who founded the program, is that humans acquire knowledge better, faster and more deeply when they are interested and connected to the material. In education jargon, and in the U.S. context, this is sometimes called “project-based learning” since it is usually shaped around a project of a student’s choice. This kind of teaching/learning is perceived as less teacher-driven, less top-down, less about memorizing atomized facts and more about integrated knowledge.
“But teachers don’t know what that is, or how to implement it in the classroom,” says Sato Fujiwara. As the standards are overhauled and updated, this course, she says, “will be more and more popular.”
The challenge, say the teachers I interviewed, is that their students aren’t used to learning this way. If a teacher asks a student to come up with a project,  teachers say the students can’t or won’t take the lead. Instead, students will wait for the teacher to come up with a list of projects the teacherwants them to do. Which kind of defeats the point.
So today, the instructors are walking teachers through a worksheet (linked here and also pictured below) that purports to help students understand how to articulate and harness their own curiosity for a research project. And how to use that curiosity as a tool for creativity and ultimately, a deeper form of learning.
It guides the teachers to ask open-ended questions so students can locate “seeds of interest. For example: What do you wonder about? What did you find strange? How does that work? What have you thought was delicious?
In the Japanese context, this is something very new.
Rieko Akiyoshi, a fourth grade teacher in a Catholic school outside of Tokyo, has taken this course before. She says enrollment is up at her school since they shifted to this more active and engaged form of pedagogy. Parents think it will better prepare their children for a global economy. But they also push back. For example, the parents of Akiyoshi’s students learned 30 key figures in Japanese history by fifth grade. Although Rieko Akiyoshi’s students learned about historic figures like Himiko and Oda Nobunaga, they didn’t do a deep dive on Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the 15th shogun. (A more minor figure, says Akiyoshi.) And parents, who learned plenty about Tokugawa Yoshinobu, were concerned that gap might hurt their kids’ chances to test into an elite high school or hurt their score on the ‘Center Test” which evaluates a student on their recall of knowledge accumulated from primary school right through high school.
“We tell parents that we want our children to learn more than history, we want them to learn from history,” says Rieko Akiyoshi.
Enrollment at a good public university, though, remains the narrow conveyor belt to a decent corporate job. And getting accepted at a good university does not depend on curiosity, creativity or understanding history but on tests which rely on memorizing historical facts, says fifth grade teacher public school teacher, Minote Shogo. And while the “Center Test” is changing and will change even more in five years, the speculation is that it won’t change that much. Japanese public education is built on tradition, says Minote Shogo, who teaches in Koganei near Tokyo. “I think a lot of teachers, too, think traditional is better. There is a set lesson and set ways for how you carry that out. The classroom is set up in a certain way. If I don’t follow the textbook, and give a test after 11 hours of math instruction, there is concern from parents and other teachers.”
For his part, Minote Shogo is convinced that teaching to spark curiosity and creativity is better for his students. “In the beginning, it was very difficult,” says Minote Shogo. “I would ask a question, and they would stop and couldn’t respond. But now they are getting accustomed to it. Gradually, they are speaking about their ideas. And I see that all this time, they have kept this inside, and now it is pouring out.”
NEXT UP: A showcase school and a visit with “The First Penguin” of education reform. (He jumps in the water and the others follow.) Then, a look at how traditional political figures and big business are rallying behind progressive education. And why.
Interested in what I’ve discovered so far?
You can take an active role in shaping this project. Please send me questions, observations, research, history and personal reflections about your own teaching and learning, thoughts about rote learning and your ideas about what makes an innovator. Tell me what you want to know from my reporting. Twitter: @pegtyre or email: pegtyre1@gmail.com
Also, if you know of someone who might be interested in being part of this project, kindly send me their email and I’ll add them to the mailing list.
My trip is made possible by a generous Abe Fellowship for Journalists (administered by the Social Science Research Council.) I retain full editorial control. I also appreciate the moral support of my colleagues at the EGF Accelerator, an incubator for education-related nonprofits.
Categories Creativity, International

OECD-PISA Leader: Arts Education May Be More Important for the 21st Century Than Test Scores

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2019 //
55

This is an ironic story. There is no one and no institution that has done more to set off an international test score competition than Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, which administers the periodic international tests called PISA, the Programme in International Student Assessment. Every nation wants to be first. Every nation waits anxiously to see whether its test scores in reading, mathematics, and science went up or down. In 2010, when the 2009 PISA scores were released, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama declared that the U.S. was facing another “Sputnik moment,” and it was time to crack down. Others wrung their hands and wondered how we could toughen up to compete with Shanghai.

Yet Scheicher testified recently to a committee of the House of Commons that arts education may be more valuable than the academic skills that are tested.

The arts could become more important for young people than maths in the future, according to a leading education expert.

Researcher Andreas Schleicher, who leads the Programme for International Student Assessment at the intergovernmental economic organisation OECD, told a House of Commons inquiry that he believed young people could benefit more from the skills gained through creativity than test-based learning.

He was giving evidence to the Education Select Committee as part of an ongoing inquiry into the fourth industrial revolution – the influence of technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence on society.

Schleicher, who is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading educational thinkers, said: “I would say, in the fourth industrial revolution, arts may become more important than maths.”

“We talk about ‘soft skills’ often as social and emotional skills, and hard skills as about science and maths, but it might be the opposite,” he said, suggesting that science and maths may become ‘softer’ in future when the need for them decreases due to technology, and the ‘hard skills’ will be “your curiosity, your leadership, your persistence and your resilience”.

His comments come amid ongoing concerns about the narrowing of the education system in the UK to exclude creativity and prioritise academic subjects.

Campaigners argue that this is prohibiting many young people from pursuing creative careers. However, Schleicher said that too narrow a curriculum could also make young people less prepared for the demands of the future.

Categories Art, Creativity, Innovation, International, Testing

Mercedes Schneider: Disillusionment with TFA, In the U.S. and Brazil

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2019 //
2

 

 

Mercedes Schneider discovered an article by a former TFA recruit, Rolf Straubhaar, who now teaches at Texas State University. 

Straubhaar compares the experience of Teach for America in the U.S. and the experience of those who joined the TFA offshoot, called a Teach for All, in Brazil.

The program in Brazil didn’t last long. It folded.

His studies persuaded him that many of the participants in these programs became skeptical of its market orientation.

He wrote:

And yet, perhaps the most interesting legacy of being trained as a teacher through TFA and Ensina!, at least for participants in these two studies, is the effect that training has had on the career plans and ideological perspectives of these teachers. Around half of the TFA teachers interviewed and the vast majority of interviewed Ensina! teachers had come to question the efficacy of the Teach For All model, both as a teacher education program and an education reform initiative intended to address educational inequality. …

The most interesting and thoughtful alums of TFA are those who reject it.

Categories Education Reform, International, Teach for America

Peg Tyre Asks for Your Help: How to Encourage Creativity

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2019 //
59

Peg Tyre, veteran journalist, needs your help. If you write her, please copy your comment here. You don’t have to, but it would be nice if you did. I know her and trust her.

Peg writes:

Japan & S. Korea Want Their Schools To Produce Innovators.
Curious About What That Looks Like? I am too!
 
 
 
Policy-makers and parents in Japan and S. Korea are determined to get rid of the shallow, rote learning, and high-stakes testing that characterizes their education systems. They want to adopt new models and help their public schools turn out a generation of innovators and creators. But what will that look like? Will they succeed? What does it mean for education in the U.S. where policy-makers are also facing wide-spread pushback against rote learning and testing?
 
I’m a seasoned journalist (New York Times, Scientific American, The Atlantic and others) and bestselling author dedicated to sophisticated, open-minded (and opened-hearted) inquiry. I’ll be traveling to Japan and S. Korea to learn from teachers, students, politicians and parents what is happening there. I’ll be sending what I hope will be six or so FREE newsletters to give you a first-hand look and feel of what I find. Read about it here, or read a more digested version in a major publication to be named later (that will be keeping it behind a paywall, I’m sure.)
 
You can take an active role in shaping this project. Please send me questions, observations, research, history and personal reflections about your own teaching and learning, thoughts about rote learning and your ideas about what makes an innovator. Tell me what you want to know from my reporting. Twitter: @pegtyre or email: pegtyre1@gmail.com
 
Also, if you know of someone who might be interested in being part of this project, kindly send me their email and I’ll add them to the mailing list.
 
My trip is made possible by a generous Abe Fellowship for Journalists (administered by the Social Science Research Council.) I retain full editorial control. I also appreciate the moral support of my colleagues at the EGF Accelerator, an incubator for education-related nonprofits.
Categories International

Canada: Conservatives Urge Charters and Privatization to “Fix” Test Scores

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2019 //
16

 

Grant Frost writes here about the plans of the new Conservative premier of Alberta to fix the schools by introducing charters and market competition. Grant attended the last NPE conference in Indianapolis. He makes clear here what has been muddy in the U.S. Privatization of public schools is a conservative goal.

Frost writes:

There is a very famous anecdote about McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and his take on business. According to legend, after speaking with an MBA class at the University of Texas in 1974, Kroc accepted an invitation to join some of the students for few few beers. During that rather laid-back social event, Kroc asked the MBA students, “What business am I in?” — to which all the students replied, quite obviously: “The hamburger business.” Kroc paused (presumably for dramatic effect) and told them they were wrong. He was not in the hamburger business. He was in the real-estate business.

Every McDonald’s restaurant that I have ever seen sits on a prime piece of real estate in whichever town it’s implanted itself. By some accounts, McDonald’s is the largest owner of real estate in the world — most of it, of course, purchased using the proceeds from the sales of the aforementioned hamburgers. But, in the end, the burgers are just the means to the end.

Now, take that same business model and apply it to local public schools. Once Kenney allows charter school operators to own property, the same premise will come into play.

Charter schools, it should be remembered, are set up to operate outside the public system. They are offered up as alternatives to traditional schools, usually after a fairly long and substantive campaign has been undertaken to convince the general population that traditional schools are failing….

The beauty in this for the edu-preneurs is that once the public buys in, parents will line up around the block to get their kids into the charter school, even in the face of evidence that the public system is actually doing well. After all, parents want what is best for their kids, and using another business strategy called FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) charter school proponents find it relatively easy to exploit parental unease.

And, of course, every single student comes to the door of the new charter school with a backpack full of taxpayer dollars in the form of per-student funding, a percentage of which can now be used by the charter school backers to buy a piece of what is undoubtedly prime real estate.

So, among all the rhetoric coming from Kenney about pipelines, the environment and student GSAs, this is one little nugget that — should it be acted upon — will open up the Canadian education system in ways that we could never have imagined possible a generation ago. Canadian schools will be open for business, with the ground they sit upon being the ultimate prize.

Welcome, Alberta, to the era of McEducation. It probably will not be long before the rest of us follow your lead.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, International, Privatization

What is the Point of PISA and the Race for Higher Scores It Inspires?

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2019 //
11

 

PISA—the international test, the Program in International Student Assessment—has set off an insane competition among nations to lift their ranking. Only one country can be #1, and the rankings have political consequences. Rich countries always get higher scores than poor ones. Nations with less poverty get higher scores than those with more poverty.

The US typically ranks in the middle, not because it is a poor country but because it has very high rates of child poverty. But the news media always report the results like a horse race and blame the schools because we are not number one. We have never been number one on international assessments because of the 20-25% of our children who live in poverty. Yet neither the federal nor state governments have adopted a goal of reducing child poverty.

The media simply refuse to acknowledge that the tests tell us that poverty matters. Instead, they produce raw meat for demagogues with simple solutions, like Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, and Arne Duncan, now DeVos. When the PISA results are released, it is another opportunity to moan about “a Sputnik moment” and dreams of becoming more like South Korea or Shanghai.

Why don’t the media or the politicians say it is time to emulate Finland, which has high rankings, low child poverty, and no standardized testing?

William Stewart of the British TES (Times Educational Supplement) reports that teachers are feeling anxiety over national rankings. 

Why are the nations of the world bothering to participate? Maybe it is a matter of national pride, even though most are doomed to “fail.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if nations opted out?

Categories Accountability, International, Testing

Ontario: Students at 700 Schools Plan Walkout to Protest Mandatory E-Learning and Increased Class Sizes

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2019 //
6

 

In a remarkable show of solidarity, students at 700 elementary and secondary schools in Ontario planned a mass walkout today to protest the government’s imposition of mandatory e-learning in high school, a ban on cellphones, and increased class sizes. 

“Students have started a movement with a very clear message: Hands off our education,” said organizer Rayne Fisher-Quann in a statement.

“Students understand the importance of fiscal responsibility, they understand the importance of balancing the budget, but most importantly they also know that our world-class education system should never be a victim of cuts,” said the Grade 12 student from William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute in North York.

That will get the attention of the government!

Categories Class size, International, Online Education, Resistance
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