What does neuroscience say about class size and poverty?

Teachers have known for decades that poverty causes deficiencies in a child's cognitive capacities.
This latest research provides more evidence to overhaul current use of high stakes testing, lowering class size and doing something for the 20 percent of children who live in the World's richest country living in abject poverty.

Michelle Rhee on the Importance of Creativity

Policy Makers Get Ready to Knee Cap Florida Public Education Again....

No offense to the hard working educators of Florida, but when a state has some of the worst policy makers in the World, there will be trouble. Governor Rick Scott, the man who hired corporate deformer and test score adjuster Tony Bennett, as his state education chief is holding an education summit without teachers and getting ready to knee-cap public education again! Look forward to a summit without any discussion of enhanced learning experiences for children by lowering class sizes or maybe increasing creativity development or fine arts learning. The same folks who derailed Florida Public Education with mandated test prep, Pavlovian pedagogy, hyper testing and narrowing of the curriculum are in charge of this summit so don't hold your breath for real improvements for Florida Public Schools.

Henry Ford Doesn't Have Anything On Rick Snyder's Mass Production Assembly Line!

Rahm Emanuel: Chief Steward of CPS

The children and citizens of Chicago are being subjected to radical de-investment of their public schools.

Why does the mayor hate democracy and public education?

Call the Mayor's Hotline here: 

312-744-5000

Eli Broad's Sick, Twisted Idea of Education Reform and the Insidious Nature of Standardized Testing

Standardized testing advocates won’t tell you what teachers already know. Standardized testing is an inherently unfair instrument to assess children’s educational growth and a horrible ordeal for many children. Why? The most egregious objection to high stakes testing is the standard error of measurement innate to all standardized testing events. Imagine a child with neurological or psycho-emotional conditions or any child for that matter, whose thinking capacities will naturally be hurried and confused during a timed, high stakes test taking event. Adult designers of the tests utilize semantic trickery in the selected response format to fool children who will know the content presented to them in regular classroom settings, but experience confusion and toxic stress caused by the deception built into the test. Significant numbers of children are going to answer incorrectly on these tests and they and their schools will lose out when the cut scores are selected and test scores fall short. These contrived tests are not reliable indicators of children’s true capacities as learners and are purposely designed to fail children.

Eli Broad of SunLife and the standardized construction magnate of KB Homes fame, wants to standardize your child’s mind through high stakes testing. Broad, through the billions of dollars he uses to leverage the standardized education reform movement has no business dictating the educational experiences of children.

Thinking about taking action? Congress is about to renew NCLB and all the high stakes testing that comes with it. Contact your representative now: http://www.house.gov/representatives/

A Nation Still At Risk: Follow the Money

The United States is in grave danger. The Pavlovian pedagogy and high stakes standardized test based education system imposed on it's young citizenry is rotting this democracy from the inside out. Wondering who infiltrated state and federal government in order to push Pavlovian test training on American children? Why were parents, communities and child development experts not consulted when these reforms masquerading as educational upgrades were pushed through?