Earlier this month, the Forum for Education and Democracy and its Rethink Learning Now partners released a toolkit to assist students, parents, educators, and anyone else interested in advocating for a better Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the main federal education law, which is past due for reauthorization. (ESEA should have been reauthorized in 2007.) [...]
Author Archives: Laura Bornfreund
June Issue: Teacher Effectiveness
June 11, 2010 – 10:34 am
This post shares three teachers’ perspectives on what it means to be an effective teacher. In addition to teaching, Rebecca Schmidt, Donna Smart Isaacs, and Dave Orphal work closely with three Rethink Learning Now Partner organizations: the Center for Inspired Teaching, the All Kinds of Minds Institute, and the Center for Teaching Quality, respectively. The [...]
Ask Mrs. Obama For Her Support!
May 11, 2010 – 9:49 am
When Mrs. Obama was on the campaign trail she said the following about the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind Program: No Child Left Behind is strangling the life out of most schools. If my future were determined by my performance on a standardized test I wouldn’t be here. I guarantee that. Many agree with [...]
May Issue: Performance Assessment
May 4, 2010 – 12:51 pm
Each month, the Rethink Learning Now campaign will feature a new issue each month, and provide specific things people can READ, WATCH, LISTEN TO, and DO in order to raise awareness, share their voice, and make a difference. This month, the topic is performance assessment. To learn more, read the following Op-Ed, written by Forum [...]
Pushed Out
April 29, 2010 – 5:02 pm
Before I moved to D.C., I worked for the City of Orlando on an initiative called the Parramore Kidz Zone (PKZ). (Read more about it here.) Parramore is a small neighborhood in downtown Orlando where about 2,100 kids live. The poverty rate in the neighborhood is high; educational attainment is low. There are lots of older youth [...]
A Local Focus on the School-to-Prison Pipeline
April 26, 2010 – 7:03 am
Last October, a Georgia middle school student, realized he mistakenly brought a fishing knife to school. Attempting to be responsible, he took the knife to the office. He was arrested, convicted of a felony, and expelled. The Georgia Legislature is working to pass a bill to keep absurd practices like this from happening again. A [...]
Help Stop the Senseless Waste of Human Potential
April 20, 2010 – 3:50 pm
FairTest, an organization for fair and open testing, says: Zero tolerance discipline and high-stakes testing policies have similar philosophical underpinnings and similar destructive results. Both stem from a 1980s movement to impose more punitive policies in both criminal justice and public education. Together, they have helped turn schools into hostile environments for many students. The end [...]
What’s the Matter With Florida?
April 12, 2010 – 7:31 pm
For better or worse Florida and Texas have long been pioneers in education reform. Unfortunately, the trail the states have blazed – with the exception of Florida’s excellent data collection system – are not ones that other states should follow. From the establishment of voucher programs and school grading systems to making the history curriculum [...]
Newsworthy
March 25, 2010 – 9:43 am
News from the States… The School Board in Raleigh, North Carolina ends busing policy that aimed to achieve economic diversity. The Connecticut Supreme Court opened the door to education funding lawsuits. Pittsburgh introduces a new teacher evaluation model that “includes a series of teacher-principal meetings interspersed with observation of a teacher’s lesson.” Concerns about changes [...]
What’s Good and What’s Not
March 18, 2010 – 3:53 pm
There are both things to get excited about and things to be concerned about in the Obama Administration’s “Blueprint for Reform,” which provides an overview of its recommendations for the reauthorization of ESEA. One the one hand, I am happy the Department wants to require states to equalize teacher distribution and create plans for a [...]
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