that 40-something states have signed onto; the "standards that states write for themselves" part.

I wonder how that is different from the standards that every state wrote for themselves before the CCSS.

I wonder which 20 programs get eliminated; I've got a wish list. Apparently, though, the things at the top of that list are NOT eliminated, since we're still working with improvement plans and high-stakes testing.

That's what I wonder reading your snips, anyway. Further reading will have to wait for a couple of days, when I've wrapped up the year and have some time.

That was my first though, there seemed be some areas where they might not be mutually compatible. Not that consistency every bothered legislators, lol.

I like the part about linking anti-LGBT bullying to federal funding.

Good luck wrapping up the year, LWolf!

was created as a harebrained counterpart to European countries that have "national standards." Well, what may work for those dinky little countries with homogeneous populations would NEVER work in the United States.

"National standards" undercuts everything that has made public education so great in this country, and that has to do with local control of schools.

Obama/Duncan's blackmail initiative Race to the Top is a thousand times worse than NCLB.

This is going to have no effect at all.

All it does is give Duncan permission to continue with his ruinous Race to the Top garbage.

Duncan should have been impeached for subverting Congress in the first place, but since D.C. politicians are totally worthless and on the take, they give him permission to continue with business as usual.

The unbearable might produce a kind of revolution, and AYP will get us there in a year or two without the waivers.

I like it only because it neuters a bit of executive authority. There's too much of the "we can do it if there's nothing explicitly forbidding us to do it, or if nobody stops us." Nixon was a bit imperial; we justly said the same of *; Obama's following much of the same line.

Some of the mandated reforms are cart-before-the-horse nonsense. Others are the best thinking of today which is doomed to be considered utterly wrong in a few years--like the outmoded best thinking of 5 years ago, which replaced the outmoded best thinking of 10 years ago, which replaced the outmoded best thinking of 15 years ago ...

Duncan needs a bit of humility. The researchers don't have all the answers. In fact, they're probably not even asking the right questions yet because they're furiously answering the questions that they believe lead them to the answers they already know to be correct. And, surprise--the answers they get show that they were right.

New generation of researchers, new generation of beliefs, new generation of correct answers showing that the old ones were, well, limited, misguided, mistaken.

We have Title I plans, SIG plans, IDEA plans, ELL plans, plans for grant applications, plans for community engagement, plans for business partnerships, plans to improve achievement, plans to differentiate instruction, (yesterday I went to a meeting where we talked about a plan to differentiate evaluations!), plans to reduce truancy, plans to increase parent involvement . . . . and it goes on and on and on.

I'm moving to a new room so for the first time in a LONG time I decided to clean out my file cabinet last month. I never throw anything away. I found one thick file after another full of this plan or that plan. It was unreal. We write these plans, kill several forests to print them out and give everyone copies they never read, then we file them away and keep on doing what we've been doing, (sometimes that's in the plan and sometimes it isn't).

I should retire and start a business helping schools write plans. I feel like I have a PhD in plan writing, or at least in plan collecting

We don't need any more stinkin plans.

Is it a new classroom?

Farther from the office and on a lower floor where it's cooler. I'm pumped.

That sounds great!