Now that New York’s students are heading into another year of Common Core-aligned standardized testing, it’s probably time to start taking bets on exactly how many kids will actually show up. With last year’s opt-out numbers reaching a staggering 20 percent and a new Regents chancellor claiming that she’d keep her own kids from taking the exams, assessment boosters might be wondering if anyone’s willing to speak up for the joy of filling in tiny bubbles. If so, they’ve found perhaps the least surprising champion in Success Academy honcho Eva Moskowitz, who gave a stridently pro-assessment interview last week following a pre-test pep rally in Harlem. “We need to know how the most affluent communities are performing and whether our kids can do as well as those—and you can’t do that with internal assessments,” she noted. Her arguments were later echoed by old pal Al Sharpton—you remember, the guy who memorably roasted her for protesting Mayor de Blasio’s charter policies. The good reverend is now on the record imploring students to take the tests and expose gaps in achievement. See? Testing was always meant to bring people together.
Chicago kids looking to enjoy a long spring weekend got a treat last Friday, when thousands of union teachers staged a one-day walkout and closed the city’s schools. The cool-sounding “wildcat” strike, which pulled in local low-wage workers and tied up downtown traffic, was launched in protest of the state government’s failure to agree on legislation addressing the district’s yawning financial deficit. The union’s relationship with the city government, which has been contentious since a much longer work stoppage in 2012, isn’t likely to benefit from the demonstration; the school board has denounced it as illegal and filed a complaint with the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board. If they’re hoping to get under the skin of Mayor (and union bête noire) Rahm Emanuel, though, they’re likely to be disappointed: He spent the weekend in New York, savoring a performance of Hamilton on Broadway. On the bright side, it’s possible he was just absorbing some edifying lessons in civics.
Rhode Island is, in many ways, the unpolished jewel in New England’s crown. Uncomplicated by Connecticut’s plutocratic sterility and Maine’s interminable tracts of frozen darkness, it is nevertheless easy to lose track of during the American traveler’s long sojourn to the mid-Atlantic. But state officials want you to know that there’s more to Massachusetts’s tiny southern neighbor than carnivorous seagulls and organized crime! Just last week, reform-friendly Education Commissioner Ken Wagner released his plan to allow the state’s schools to be designated “empowerment schools,” allowing them unheard-of levels of autonomy. Under the proposal, such entities would gain far greater budgeting, curriculum, and personnel authority. They would also be allowed to embrace open enrollment, accepting students from anywhere in the state. The plan is already receiving a far better reception than the state’s troubled new publicity campaign: In addition to ludicrously overbilling Rhode Island’s share of national historic monuments, the publicity push also attempted to christen a state slogan of “Cooler & Warmer,” which, as you may have gathered, makes no sense. Hope they aren’t earmarking future tourism dollars in the education budget.
