Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

Ravitch on N.Y.'s testing "Ponzi scheme"

Diane Ravitch has gone through some big changes as a result of Bridging Differences, her diablog with Deb Meier. In her latest post she joins Fair Test in saluting Meier and then recounts her own transforming ideas on standardized testing and the ways test scores have been misused to "punish kids, teachers, and schools and to mislead the public." In the process, she exposes the "institutionalized lying" behind the magical statewide jump in test scores.

More news for Ravitch watchers: She tells me she has split from the conservative Fordham and Hoover think tanks. Welcome news. Nice going, Diane.

The bad joke that was "Ed in '08"

In case you were wondering whether that $25 million or so that the Gates and Broad Foundations invested in ED in '08 paid off, Strong American Schools, which managed the program, is here to tell you that the campaign "has helped turn the need for education reform from a low-priority campaign issue into one of the Obama administration's top policy priorities." (Politics K-12)

Not SmallTalk

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled. (NYT)