WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Goodbye to all that

I'm not including any notable quotables this week that make any reference to Superman. Fact is, I'm just sick of this daddy of all ed clichés. So if you're waiting for Superman or not waiting for Superman, or think that Michelle Rhee or Geoffrey Canada is Superman, or even Clark Kent, get the hell off my blog and start digging a little deeper for good metaphors. I mean for goodness sakes the guy wears his underwear on the outside of his leotard. Here are some possible explanations why.

58,000 teachers lost jobs despite Edujobs bill

"What the payroll numbers show is unambiguous: teachers were cut. A lot of them," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the progressive Economic Policy Institute. "States should have gotten more fiscal relief to keep this from happening. The job loss was 58,000 jobs in state and local education in September. (Arthur Delaney, HuffPost)

Schools fixated on test scores, not learning

Evidence had been mounting for some time that the state’s tests, which have formed the basis of almost every school reform effort of the past decade, had serious flaws.

“If they are not learning social studies but their reading scores are going up, they are not getting an education,” Ms. Ravitch said in 2005, as the mayor coasted to re-election.(Jennifer Medina, NYT)

A slap in the face

In a letter Thursday, Chicago schools C.E.O. Huberman agreed to the delay razing the field house at Whittier School to "give sufficient time to meet with representatives of the Whittier community and plan the future of the building.'' Parents have been occupying the field house for 25 days, demanding a library for their school.

"It's a slap in the face,'' Whittier parent Araceli Gonzalez said of Huberman's letter. "We want a letter, simple as that, to not demolish [the field house] and it will be a library.'' (Sun-Times)