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Rewind: The Dropout Nation Podcast: Why Civil Rights Activists Should Embrace School Reform

July 28, 2010 Dropout Nation Podcast, Giving Parents Power, Rewind, This is Dropout Nation 1 Comment

Two kids attending the Bronx Charter School for Better Living

Photo courtesy of the New York Daily News

With  old-school civil rights groups complaining about President Barack Obama’s embrace of the school reform movement — and its commitment to improving the quality of education for all children — listen to this Dropout Nation Podcast from February on why their approach to educational equity doesn’t work. The only way educational equity will actually be achieved for every child is by addressing how public education is structured — including giving parents their proper place as kings at the education decision-making table, and improving the quality of curricula in every school. Not only does this commentary apply to these groups, but to fellow-travelers such as the Civil Rights Project at UCLA and New Jersey’s Education Law Center.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, Zune, MP3 player or smartphone.  Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also, add the podcast on Viigo, if you have a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phone.

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Watch: Michelle Rhee on Teacher Quality and Achievement Gaps

July 24, 2010 School Leadership, This is Dropout Nation, Video Education, teacher quality No Comments

(Click on the headline to watch the video)

Certainly Michelle Rhee knows how to stir up controversy — especially when it comes to her efforts as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools to improve the district’s abysmal quality of teaching and curricula. Her decision to dismiss 241 teachers rated as ineffective by the district’s year-old IMPACT system (which uses student test score data as part of evaluations) is going to be contested by the district’s dysfunctional American Federation of Teachers local and will play its part in the election battle between her patron, Mayor Adrian Fenty and rival (and Rhee foe) Vincent Gray. Rhee’s bedside manner isn’t exactly lovely. But she deserves much praise for her Churchillian commitment to seriously overhauling a school system once called the Superfund Site of American public education and for slowly revamping an obsolete regime of teacher compensation that is terrible for children and high-quality teachers alike.

In this clip from her 2008 testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee, Rhee not only explains why improving teacher quality is important, but why we can no longer count on integration and the noble desire to improve education for all children to address racial-, ethnic- and gender-based achievement gaps. Improving education for all children not only requires dedication to the idea that all children can learn and deserve the best education. It also means restructuring a system that has long damned itself (and kids) to low expectations. Also, watch this Dropout Nation video on how Rhee’s teacher czar, Jason Kamras, is working to improve teacher quality and the challenges he faces in doing so.

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  • Rewind: The Dropout Nation Podcast: Why Civil Rights Activists Should Embrace School Reform
    With  old-school civil rights groups complaining about President Barack Obama’s embrace of the school reform movement — and its commitment to improving the quality of education for all children — listen to this Dropout Nation Podcast from February on why their approach to educational equity doesn’t work. The only way educational equity will actually be […]
  • The Dropout Nation Podcast: Five Steps Toward Fostering Great Teachers
    On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast,  I offer some important steps towards recruiting and developing more high-quality teachers. Eliminating tenure, eliminating seniority-based benefits and embracing the use of student performance data — along with moves such as the dismissal of 241 poor-performing teachers last week by D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Miche […]
  • Rewind: The Dropout Nation Podcast: Building Ties Between School Reformers and Grassroots Activists
    As part of a further discussion about the importance of Beltway school reformers to embrace the grassroots, here is a rewind of a February Dropout Nation Podcast on the subject. Inside-the-Beltway policymaking, important as it is, will mean nothing for improving the educational destinies of children if school reformers don’t reach out to urban groups […]

Recent Comments:

  • MK Cipolla: Steve, You've done an outstanding job clarifying the "reading wars"misinformation. Ruth Kaminski and Roland Good(who are not even teachers) sa...
  • Marion Brady: Good work, Steve....
  • TFT: I used this when I taught K: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65745/01%20ABC%20Song.mp3 I agree with Steve about sound-to-symbol, as the above dit...
  • Chad Sansing: RiShawn, this is a really thought-provoking piece for me. I think I entered ed school a reasonably successful and highly motivated student; however, I...
  • Alan King: "DC Youth Speak On The Truth About School Reform" Please read it at http://wp.me/pC3Xj-gr...

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