It’s All In The Research

• "Won't Back Down" Film Pushes ALEC Parent Trigger Proposal.

• A Dissent magazine review aptly describes the film as a showcase for“Empowerment” against democracy

• Bruce Rauner has a plan to cash in on his charter investment.
• Broad Report, Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation
• Diane Ravitch helps connect the dots between hedge-fund managers and charter schools
• Edwatchat Great Schools for America, a database showing the corporate-backed education-reform organizations
• Joanne Barkan

•  On the astroturf reformers
• On billionaires controlling our public schools

• Kenneth Saltman

• Essay on Broad Foundation & venture philanthropy
• Essay on corporate school reform
• Review essay of Kenneth Saltman’sThe Gift of Education: Public Education and Venture Philanthropy

• Kevin Kumashiro on billionaires as education experts
• Rethinking Schools Blog, “Broad Foundation Wants to Step on the Gas”
• Other great articles and resources on big money and education reform

• Wall street profiteeringoff the U.S. education industry
• The propaganda of Gates money and four corporate reform think tanks
• The corporate funding behind the school choice debate

• Rethinking Schools Blog,“A Primer on Corporate Education Reform”
• Diane Ravitch
• The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books.
• Study guide to Death and Life of the Great American School System, prepared by Carol Burris
• Pauline Lipman
•  Essay and book on neoliberal education restructuring
• On urban school reform in the context of globalization and inequality.
• William Watkins
• The Assault on Public Education: Confronting the Politics of Corporate School Reform
• CTU Review of The Assault on Public Education
• Other great articles and resources on corporate reform and the defense of public schools
• Commonwealth Institute, Responding to the Attack on Public Education & Teacher Unions
• Susan Ohanian& Kathy Emery, Why Is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools?

• School choice
• Exploring the School Choice Universe: Evidence and Recommendations, a collection of articles edited by Gary Miron and Kevin G Welner.
• Rethinking Schools Blog, “Charter Schools and Corporate Ed Reform”
• Parent trigger laws miss the target. The National Education Policy Center releases a critical memo of the parent trigger law.
• School closings, turnarounds& probation
• Chicago-based Designs For Change shows how school-based democracy out-performs ‘turnarounds’
• Data and Democracy reports on school closings, turnarounds for years 2008, 2009, 2012 in Chicago.
• Reporter Curtis Black on the failures of the CPS probation policy
• Tina Trujillo on the Catch-22 of school turnarounds
• William Mathis criticizes  the communications strategy to promote turnarounds and school closings released by the non-partisan Public Agenda.
• Criticism of Race to the Top
• Framework from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Rainbow PUSH, and other civil rights groups
• Collection of criticism at Black Agenda Report
• High Stakes Testing
• Collateral Damage: How High-Stakes Testing Corrupts America’s Schools by Sharon L. Nichols, and David C. Berliner
• Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center – High Stakes Testing Position Paper
• Chicago Teachers Union Quest Center – Merit Pay is Not the Solution

• Does Money Matter in Education? - The Albert Shanker Institute. “In short, money matters, resources that cost money matter, and more equitable distribution of school funding can improve outcomes.”
• Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card - Ed Law Center. “Clearly, no school improvement strategy can be successful unless built on a foundation of sufficient funding that is fairly distributed to school districts to address issues associated with concentrated poverty.”
• Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success by David C. Berliner. “This brief details six out-of-school factors (OSFs) common among the poor that significantly affect the health and learning opportunities of children, and accordingly limit what schools can accomplish on their own”
• PISA: It’s Poverty Not Stupid by Mel Riddile. The 2009 PISA test results showed the U.S. ranking 14th among the nations tested, but test results also show a direct correlation between poverty and test scores. The author comments that Sec. of Education Arne Duncan “doesn’t trust us enough to tell us the truth.”
• Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap, by Richard Rothstein. Read also a conversation with Richard Rothstein. 
• Summary and comments on Schooling in Capitalist America, the seminal work by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis on the role public schooling plays in reproducing inequality. The authors revisit the argument in 2002 with new evidence. 
• The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future by Linda Darling-Hammond. Read also an interview with Linda Darling-Hammond.
• The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol. Also, Edweek and Kozolconfront the inequality juggernaut.

• Transition for Urban Youth with Disabilities Leaving Secondary Education by Lisa S. Cushing and Michelle Parker-Katz
• Beyond the Classroom: An Analysis of a Chicago Public School Teacher’s Actual Work Day by Robert Bruno, Steven Ashby and Frank Manzo.
• Urban Teaching: The Essentials by Lois Weiner. A realistic description and evaluation of the urban teaching experience.
• Learn about teachers’ perspectives from The MetLife Survey of the American Teacherby the MetLife Foundation
• Promoting Quality Instruction: Teacher Evaluation or Teacher Collaboration? - Chicago Teachers Union. “Teachers or Teaching? There are two approaches to promoting instructional quality: focus on teachers or focus on teaching.”
• Bad Teacher! How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture by KevinKumashiro. “Kevin Kushiro, takes aim at the current debate on education reform, paying particular attention to the ways that scapegoating public-school teachers, teacher unions, and teacher education masks the real, systemic problems”
• The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas from the World's Teachers for Improving Education in the Classroom by James W. Stiglerand James Hiebert. Authors argue that teaching is a cultural activity. Rather than search for silver-bullets we need to invest in “a system for developing professional knowledge and giving teachers the opportunity to learn about teaching”. See also the book review from Harvard Educational Review.
• Will Johnson on the organization of teaching work and the “lean education” agenda. “The predictable increase in teacher turnover reflects another hallmark of lean production: replacing skilled workers with an unskilled, contingent workforce.”
• Learn about professional development through Lesson Study from the Chicago Lesson Study Group. Also see why the Chicago Teachers Union supports Lesson Study to improve instruction, and a WBEZ report on lesson study in Chicago.
• Teachers for Social Justice “We are working toward classrooms and schools that are anti-racist, multicultural / multilingual, and grounded in the experiences of our students.”

• A Tale of Two Schools: The Human Story Behind Destructive School Actions in Chicago
• There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America by Alex Kotlowitz.
• Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools by Jonathan Kozol. Also read this interview with Jonathan Kozol from 1992, the year of the book’s publication.
• Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement partners with communities to “accomplish holistic community development goals, informing and influencing policy change, and improving how government does business with communities.”
• The Woodstock Institute works locally and nationally to create a financial system in which lower-wealth persons and communities of color can safely borrow, save, and build wealth so that they can achieve economic security and community prosperity.”
• Community Renewal Society: http://www.communityrenewalsociety.org/
• Chicago Reporter investigates race and poverty in Chicago.
• Chicago Rehab Network: http://www.chicagorehab.org/

The evidence against corporate reformers and their education policies runs as deep as their pockets. Learn more about the fight for educational justice from these authors, educators, researchers and activists. 

• Alfie Kohn – collection of articles by the author “described in Time magazine as ‘perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.’”
• Collaborative for Equity and Justice in Education (CEJE), http://www.uic.edu/educ/ceje/resources.html
• Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE), http://createchicago.blogspot.com/
• The Civil Rights Project / ProyectoDerechosCiviles at UCLA  - “research on key civil rights and equal opportunity policies that have been neglected or overlooked.”
• David C. Berliner, collected writings. Regents' Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at Arizona State University.
• Diane Ravitch, historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University, blogs at http://dianeravitch.net/
• Economic Policy Institute–“EPI documents impacts of social and economic inequality on student achievement, and suggests policies, within school and out, to narrow outcome gaps between middle class and disadvantaged students.”
• Gerald Bracey, collected writings of the now deceased critic of assessment and advocate for public education. 
• Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://greatlakescenter.org/
• Mark Naison, professor of history at Fordham University
• FairTest (National Center For Fair & Open Testing)  – “FairTest works to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, ope­n, valid and educationally beneficial”
• National Education Policy Center – “The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) sponsors research, produces policy briefs, and publishes expert third party reviews of think tank reports.”
• Rethinking Schools, publication page and blog.
• Rich Gibson, collection of articles by educator and social justice advocate related to education, equality and social reality.
• Richard Rothstein, collection of publications
• School Finance 101 Blog – Blog of education research Bruce D. Banker. Analysis of fair school funding, debunking of myths around charter school effectiveness, and role of funding in educational outcomes.
• Schools Matter Blog – “Advocates for a commitment to and a re-examination of the democratic purposes of schools”. Excellent reporting on latest corporate-backed reform groups, standardized testing, and privatization of public education. Contributors include noted education activists Jim Horn, Susan Ohanian among others.
• Steven D. Krashen, collection of writings by educational researcher, with a focus on literacy and language acquisition.