History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
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Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
How the media garbled Randi's message
- 01-19-2010
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Column by Diane Ravitch/Education Week
Dear Deborah, I am sure you were as surprised as I was to read the headlines in the newspapers saying that Randi Weingarten proposed that teachers should be evaluated by their students' test scores. This is a contentious issue. In New York, at Randi's urging, the state legislature passed a law preventing districts from doing exactly this. Now, to qualify for the so-called Race to the Top, the state must roll back this legislation. We know the downside of evaluating teachers by student scores. It is neither a fair nor an accurate way to judge teachers, and it produces unintended negative consequences. It compels teachers to teach to the test. This in turn narrows the curriculum to what is tested. As Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has acknowledged, the current tests should be replaced by better tests; why then use them for high-stakes decisions? (more...)
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