Lloyd's Anything Blog

Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: This video was made by NYC public-school parent and film-maker Michael Elliot. It is a powerful video that expresses the views of parents and students.

Originally posted on Andrea Gabor: W. Edwards Deming united scientific and humanistic approaches to management When I returned from speaking at the annual conference of the Deming Institute in Los Angeles last month, the education sites were abuzz about a new Time magazine cover trumpeting “Bad Apples”, the latest example of what has become a new national sport–knee-jerk teacher bashing.…

Originally posted on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé: The term social promotion has been misused by the corporate supported, fake, public-education reform movement to fool as many people as possible—the same as they have misused the meaning of teacher tenure. There is no such thing as social promotion in most if not all of the U.S. public schools that…

Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Peter Greene noted that Minneapolis followed the terrible examples of Los Angeles in 2010 and New York City in 2012 and published teachers’ value-added ratings in the newspapers for all to see. Even Bill Gates objected to this practice and said in a New York Times article that it would harm the relationship between…

Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: Matthew Tully of the Indianapolis Star calls on Republicans to stop their war against state Superintendent Glenda Ritz. Ritz was elected in 2012, handiy beating incumbent Tony Bennett despite his 10-1 spending advantage. Since her election, the Republican Governor Mike Pence and Legislature and state board have done everything possible to undercut Ritz. Pence…

Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: David Callahan wrote an insightful article in “Inside Philanthropy” about something that most of us have noticed: the growing power of foundations that use their money to impose their ideas and bypass democratic institutions. In effect, mega-foundations like Gates and Walton use their vast wealth to short circuit democracy. Callahan identifies five scary trends…

Originally posted on Left Coast Voices: In just over two weeks, I will travel with a group of global activists to India to see projects funded by American Jewish World Service and hear the stories of our grantees, their challenges and vision. To help prepare myself, I just finished reading Katherine Boo’s Behind The Beautiful Forevers. I admit I do not often read  non-fiction,…

Originally posted on Diane Ravitch's blog: The two great forces shaping the future at this time are globalization and technology. Globalization has its benefits: We are more aware than ever of our interconnectedness with other people, nations, and cultures. But it has its downside: corporations outsource jobs to places where people work for less and there are no unions There…