In a stunning turn of events, President Obama announced last weekend that “unnecessary testing” is “consuming too much instructional time” and creating “undue stress for educators and students.” Rarely has a president so thoroughly repudiated such a defining aspect of his own public education policy. In a three-minute video announcing this reversal, Obama cracks jokes …
Continue reading Obama regrets “taking the joy out of teaching and learning” with too much testing
A couple of weeks ago, Gwen Ifill and the PBS News Hour crew flew to Seattle. They spent one day following me and one day following the richest person who ever lived, Bill Gates, to ask us about our ideas on education reform. I was simply shocked to hear that they would be running an …
Last Thursday I flew to New York City to take on Peter Cunningham, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education (under Secretary Arne Duncan, during President Obama's first term), in a debate hosted by Al Jazeera America’s program The Third Rail. We debated the question, "Is public education in the U.S. broken beyond repair?" I …
Before the testing season began, educators in Seattle knew that because of the lack of proper preparations, IT support, technological upgrades, and training - and due to the outlandish number of tests administered this year - testing pandemonium would ensue. Last week the Social Equality Educators (SEE) put a call out for teachers to share their …
Below is the thank you letter that educators at Seattle's Garfield High School wrote to Nathan Hale High School for their courage in taking the lead in the movement to oppose the new "Smarter Balanced Assessment," Common Core Tests. Their example helped inspire Garfield to win a major victory against the SBA test, and has …
I AM AN EDUCATOR 
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