Contributing to an informed citizenry, inside and outside the classroom.
Your kids are doing better than their end of year test allows them to be labeled. Both you and your kid need to know this. The deck is stacked against students in demonstrating their success because nearly all standardized educational testing is built around a curve designed to knock kids down rather than lift them... Continue Reading →
What more would your child's classroom have if the NC General Assembly had not deprived each NC classroom of nearly $100,000 since the Class of 2024 entered kindergarten? For the last few years on this blog I've calculated a Class of 20XX "student tax" to measure the state financial support denied to the current graduating... Continue Reading →
When many students show growth, it should be celebrated. If all students show growth, they should have an opportunity to be acknowledged as growing. So why does North Carolina use a contracted formula originally used in agriculture to plow public school student performance with misleading data? The system is not designed to label all students... Continue Reading →
Last year, Republicans in the General Assembly eliminated an income cap as an eligibility requirement to receive a private school voucher. This decision alone will funnel millions of dollars away from helping public schools in low-income communities and into the hands of wealthy families who never even considered sending their children to their community’s public... Continue Reading →
For part 2 of this Bursting the Bubble Sheet series, I’m going to zoom out to ensure I’m clearly communicating the forest of this project before diving into each tree: There’s an unfortunate fact pattern where deceptively portrayed K-12 data is being used to undermine communities’ faith in their local public schools as a marketing... Continue Reading →
Preface: Over a decade ago Rhett Carlson, a high school science teacher, reverse-engineered EVAAS - a K-12 test data translation tool created by NC-based analytics company SAS and used by the NC Department of Public Instruction. This program is modeled after one that was used in agriculture to increase plant growth and cull dairy herds... Continue Reading →
Earlier this month, the NC General Assembly overrode Gov. Roy Cooper's veto to make S49 law. Among other things, this law requires the following: As a teacher tasked with implementing this law in my classroom and a mom of 2 schoolchildren, I was sincerely interested in proactively navigating how the "naming clause" would impact my... Continue Reading →
A few years ago when my son was learning about the Civil Rights Movement, he offered his class the recent example of the Black man at Starbucks who was arrested after trying to use the bathroom. He told me about this on our car ride home but I didn’t know where my six-year-old heard about... Continue Reading →
educatEDpolicy 