Cloaking Inequity

After successive years of failing to meet high-stakes testing and accountability mandates required by NCLB (2002), schools across the nation have undergone numerous restructuring practices in an effort to “turnaround” their failure. When schools fail to demonstrate AYP and receive successive years of unacceptable accountability ratings, NCLB stipulates additional sanctions be applied to the school […]

Happy Fathers Day!! Now that the discussion of whether NCLB would actually close “achievement gaps” by 2014 is nearly in our rear view mirror (it is not going to happen, not even close— it is going to take 80 more years based on recent NAEP research, NCLB actually slowed our progress) let’s take a look […]

Although U.S. schools are more racially diverse than ever before, they are growing increasingly segregated, with African American and Latina/o students attending more segregated schools than at any time in the past 20 years (Orfield, 2009). Although current levels of school segregation are reminiscent of the pre-Brown era, the demographics of students in U.S. schools […]

Sign The Education Declaration to Rebuild America For too long, our policymakers have engaged the nation’s schoolchildren in a grand experiment, with frequent testing, incentive programs and top-down mandates that promised much but delivered little. Today, after an education spring of protest and dissent, leading advocates, academics, and educators have come together to demand An […]

Story by Luke Quinton that ran today on KUT NPR about the passage of HB5 in Texas. Listen here. Text of story quoted below. When Gov. Rick Perry signed House Bill 5 this week, it signaled that the waves of complaints from parents opposed to high stakes testing, had caught hold. But one irony is […]

Cloaking Inequity is back! I am now stateside from a hiatus to attend meetings at the Brazilian Senate in Brasilia. I am addicted to pão de queijo. A few photos from the signing of a new collaborative agreement Brazil and the University of Texas at Austin. Speaking of the Senate… As young children, Americans are inculcated with […]

Harkin has released his Strengthening America’s Schools Act of 2013. A re-authorization of ESEA and revision to NCLB. I will try to produce Cloaking Inequity’s analysis in the next few days. Press release:  http://lnkd.in/nZJjKT Bill:  http://lnkd.in/mrG3Ns Bill summary:  http://lnkd.in/DvA3pY See Cloaking Inequity’s posts on high-stakes testing and accountability. I am in Brazil for meetings at […]

Cloaking Inequity has explored the ulterior motives of school “reformers” in prior posts (See for example Walking Away From High Stakes Tests, A Noble Lie and Letter to Civil Rights and school “choice” advocate (p.s. neoliberals skip this) and Update on Smart ALEC: Education, Privatization, and the Pursuit of Profit. Recently, Leslie T. Fenwick, the Dean of the Howard School of Education explored […]

Happy Memorial Day! On this day I remember my grandfather and all the courageous men and women who fought for freedoms. As of today, Memorial Day 2013, it appears that House Bill 5 is headed to Gov. Perry’s desk and that students in Texas will get some freedom from high-stakes testing— at least on the […]

In the post “Merit” Apartheid: Forces Determined to Segregate Higher Education? I wrote: 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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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). […]

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 […]

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 […]