obama

Obama’s education platform: Republicans should be flattered and Democrats ashamed?

Mr. President, welcome to Austin! I was looking over your “Forward” education platform and I thought I would share it with the readers of Cloaking Inequity. I think they will ...

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Frank Convo with KIPP’s Mike Feinberg: Do you call BS?

I had a coffee conversation with Mike Feinberg yesterday. About two weeks ago Mike Feinberg contacted me via email about one of my posts on Cloaking Inequity. He related that ...

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Cloaking Inequity on elite list

Teach 100 consistently ranks Cloaking Inequity as one of the Top 100 education blogs in the world. See today’s rank at the bottom of the page. Remember, CI is a one ...

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JVH@TX Senate Ed Committee: Invited Testimony on Charters

Today I was invited by Senator Royce West to give testimony on ...
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Help Has Arrived!: How to Banish NCLB’s Narrow Paradigm

How can we banish NCLB’s top-down and narrow paradigm? Here is how ...
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Texas Enrontizes Federal Graduation Data?

At the end of 2012, with much fanfare Texas trumpeted that its ...
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Education Outcomes: Texas vs. California vs. New York vs. Nation

Today we are pleased to release the report Is Texas leading its ...
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MSNBC Education Nation 2012 Part II: Demanding accountability from charters

During the second segment of the Melissa Harris-Perry Show at MSNBC’s Education Nation 2012, we discussed access ...
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Teach For America: A review of the evidence (The research that TFA loves to hate…)

Vasquez Heilig, J. & Jez, S. (2010). Teach For America: A review of ...

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The Teat: IRS Loopholes/Conspiracy Benefitting School “Reformers”?

Heard anything about the IRS in the news lately? Here is more interesting scuttlebutt about the IRS and educational “reformers.” First, as is the tradition of The Teat, a cow Haiku: Every cow comes wrapped in cowhide, but that does not serve to hide the cow. Former IRS Commissioner, Doug Shulman, who resigned in November 2012, recalled […]

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LA and the Recovery School District approach (SB1718): A P.T. Barnum Circus

I suspect P.T. Barnum would be proud of the showmanship eminating from Louisiana— an educational policy circus. The Recovery School District has been acclaimed as “a game changer for New Orleans” and very likely today be up for a vote in the Texas House in Senate Bill 1718— and perhaps soon in a Legislature near you. […]

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New Orleans' Recovery School District: The Lie Unveiled

Reblogged from deutsch29: Yesterday, I was watching a video clip of the 2011 Aspen Institute debate between Wendy Kopp and Diane Ravitch.  In a final effort to defend corporate reform, Kopp tells the audience, “I encourage everyone to see for yourself, study for yourself… New Orleans….” I intend to take Kopp up on her offer […]

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Walking Away From High Stakes Tests, A Noble Lie

From Wikipedia: A noble lie is a myth or untruth, told by an elite to maintain social harmony or to advance an agenda. The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in the Republic. Plato presented the noble lie in a fictional tale— Socrates provides the origin of the three social classes who compose the republic proposed by Plato: . . . the earth, as being […]

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Kiss Michelle Rhee Goodbye

Reblogged from Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: With the publication of Radical and a few years after founding StudentsFirst, a policy advocacy organization, former Washington, D.C. Chancellor of schools continues to push her reform agenda nationally, one that was severely burned when she exited the district after only three years in office. Well […]

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Los Chistes: “Say Hello to My Little Friend”

To add a little humor to the education and public policy debate, Cloaking Inequity features a series entitled Los Chistes (Also check out The Teat, which examines where various school “reformers” derive their funding). Who needs students when the Texas Legislature can legislate a pile of guns into my classroom? You better finish that statistics final on time […]

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Sacheen Littlefeather Protest Acceptance of Marlon Brando's Godfather Oscar

Absent?: Native Americans and Standards

Last evening I watched a film on Netflix entitled “The Reel Injun.” Midway through the film, the director profiled when Sacheen Littlefeather presented a speech on behalf of actor Marlon Brando, for his performance in The Godfather, when he boycotted the 45th Academy Awards ceremony on March 27, 1973, in protest of the treatment of Native Americans by the film industry (description via Wikipedia). […]

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From the Mailbag: Is Charter Legislation Inconsistent with Democratic Control of Schools?

One of the most challenging aspects of charters and choice that our society is struggling with are the potential incompatibilities with democratic and community control of schools. Last year NEPC recently released a report entitled  Democracy Left Behind: How Recent Education Reforms Undermine Local School Governance and Democratic Education.  I previously discussed the brief in context […]

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A Trinity of Counter-Narrative: NCLB-Style Standards, High-Stakes Testing, and Accountability

Last week I was told that I was a “intellectually unrigorous pseudo-scholar” and “obsessed” with being perceived as important and influential.” My response to the microaggression? At the core of my being, I do what I do everyday because I hope that the counter-narratives that we discuss here on Cloaking Inequity will impact equity and the educational […]

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DOE agrees to pay legal costs and late fees for not producing records in settlement of LouisianaVoice's public records suit

Reblogged from Louisiana Voice: We tried repeatedly to warn the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) and Education Superintendent John White: • Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2013 7:55 PM To: john.white@la.gov; joan.hunt@la.gov Subject: PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST I should not have to remind you that you are answerable to the people of this state whether or not […]

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Dear Jennifer: Dissent is the Vibrancy of our Democracy

In the mid-1990s I lived in an asian country for five months. I won’t say which here on my blog, because I don’t want their censors to find this blog and ban me from entering the country. If you are curious which country, go to my vita and look for the fellowship that I received […]

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School Turnaround: Talking Head Leaders Aren’t Capable, Our Educators Are

It is fairly common knowledge that Secretary Duncan earned his credibility as the leader of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). How did he find his way to that position with very limited experience in the education field? He had made a name for himself “turning around” CPS schools. Now reports out of Chicago are revealing […]

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Dollar Bill Ya’ll: Speculative Bubble(s) in Education?

At the recent AERA conference in San Francisco, I was having a conversation with a local San Franciscan. He we mentioning that he was disappointed that he had not been able to take financial advantage of the last two “bubbles.” He was asking aloud what other thought was going to be the next “bubble.” I […]

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From the Mailbag: Microaggressed about “Merit” Apartheid

Well, I am back from AERA. Had the great pleasure of hanging out with Kennet Santana, my freshman college roommate at the University of Michigan. He is an ELD teacher in the Bay Area (check out his classroom yearbook here on Youtube), and a hero of a school tragedy they never became one because of […]

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“Merit” Apartheid: Forces Determined to Segregate Higher Education?

It appears more and more that there are forces that are determined to re-segregate higher education in Texas and elsewhere. The desegregation of higher education is currently inevitable in places like Texas under existing policies such at the Top Ten Percent Plan because of the rapidly changing racial demographics of students in K-12 (Note: We examined […]

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Blogging Live from San Francisco AERA: Teach For America and Race (clueless?)

Blogging live from the AERA conference in San Francisco. I am currently listening to the presentations in the session The Racial Complexities of Teach for America in High-Poverty Schools and preparing for duties as discussant. So what is the data collected by researchers being said by these scholar of TFA? (See CI’s TFA posts here) Is there […]

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Next-to-Last Place Ribbon of Honor: Cheapistas in Denial

Have you noticed that the same jokers that are telling us our public schools are inadequate are the same jokers that have inadequately funded our schools for decades ($5.4 billion most recently in Texas)? In fact, the cheapistas want to wear the fact that Texas is next to last in school spending as a ribbon […]

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Yo, Stop Jivin’: New Accountability is Retro— Still Rockin Tests

Zoinks! With gobs of kangblabla Michael Williams, current Texas Education Commissioner and former Railroad Commissioner, recently announced the 2013 Texas Accountability approach: I have heard the criticism of the previous accountability system, with its overemphasis on a school’s lowest performing areas and its blind spot to what a district or charter might be doing well…The new system makes […]

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Crazy Crawfish's Blog

Zesty Politics with a Dollop of Louisiana Goodness

Living in Dialogue

"It does not require many words to speak the truth." Chief Joseph, Nez Perce

The Answer Sheet

"It does not require many words to speak the truth." Chief Joseph, Nez Perce

Diane Ravitch's blog

A site to discuss better education for all

A "Fuller" Look at Education Issues

Examining K-12 and higher ed issues across the country by Dr. Ed Fuller

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