Category Archives: Ethics

Texas School Districts Violated a Law Intended to Add Transparency to Local Elections

Posted on 29/04/2024 by Richard P Phelps

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune analyzed 35 Texas school districts that held trustee elections last fall and found none that posted all of the required campaign finance records. by Lexi Churchill and Jessica Priest ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, information suppression, K-12 | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

This Private Equity Firm Is Amassing Companies That Collect Data on America’s Children

Posted on 11/02/2023 by Richard P Phelps

Vista Equity Partners has been buying up software used in schools. Parents want to know what the companies do with kids’ data By: Todd Feathers Over the past six years, a little-known private equity firm, Vista Equity Partners, has built … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, FERPA, K-12, privacy | Leave a comment

Cheating in the Classroom: We all have a choice

Posted on 13/08/2021 by Loretta Breuning

I was naive about cheating as a student, so I was also naive as a professor. Then one day a student complained to me about cheating during my exam. That put me in an awkward position. The culture of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Curriculum & Instruction, Education Fraud, Ethics, K-12, Testing/Assessment | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Hershey Profits Fund $17 Billion Endowment for Nonprofit School, but Board Member Says It Won’t Let Him See Financial Records

Posted on 24/04/2021 by Richard P Phelps

(This story was originally published by ProPublica.) by Bob Fernandez, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Charlotte Keith, Spotlight PA ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, information suppression, K-12 | Leave a comment

Persian Gulf tensions recall a previous “gulf” crisis: The Tonkin Gulf Resolution

Posted on 05/08/2019 by Erich Martel

Why congressional oversight and investigative journalism must be aggressive Dear Member of Congress, Dear Investigative Journalist, The recent ebb and flow of tensions in and around the Persian Gulf and the president’s family’s business ties to Gulf and Mid-east states … Continue reading →

Posted in Erich Martel, Ethics, History, Humanities, information suppression, Social Studies | Leave a comment

There’s A Deeper Systemic Problem in the College Admissions Scandal No One Is Talking About

Posted on 14/04/2019 by Richard P Phelps
Posted in College prep, Education Fraud, Ethics, Testing/Assessment | Leave a comment

Surprise! SBAC and CRESST stonewall public records request for their financial records

Posted on 01/10/2017 by Richard P Phelps

Say what you will about Achieve, PARCC, Fordham, CCSSO, and NGA— some of the organizations responsible for promoting the Common Core Initiative on us all. But, their financial records are publicly available. Not so for some other organizations responsible for … Continue reading →

Posted in Censorship, Common Core, Education policy, Ethics, information suppression, K-12, research ethics, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Close all USED-funded research centers: Evaluation of existing regulations: My two bits

Posted on 08/07/2017 by Richard P Phelps

My comments below in response to the USED request for comments on existing USED regulations. To submit your own, follow the instructions at:  https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=ED-2017-OS-0074-0001 MEMORANDUM To:  Hilary Malawer, Assistant General Counsel, Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Department of Education … Continue reading →

Posted in Censorship, Common Core, Education policy, Education Reform, Ethics, information suppression, K-12, OECD, research ethics, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment | Tagged | 2 Comments

“Organizationally orchestrated propaganda” at ETS

Posted on 18/01/2017 by Richard P Phelps

With the testing opt-out movement growing in popularity in 2016, Common Core’s profiteers began to worry. Lower participation enough and the entire enterprise could be threatened: with meaningless aggregate scores; compromised test statistics vital to quality control; and a strong … Continue reading →

Posted in Censorship, College prep, Common Core, Education policy, Ethics, information suppression, Richard P. Phelps | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Martin Luther King’s non-violence: Personal belief or strategy or both?

Posted on 16/01/2017 by Erich Martel

On a day when we remember Martin Luther King, I want to share a personal perspective on his advocacy of non-violence. When the wisdom of a great person is invoked, omission of the context that gave it meaning demeans the … Continue reading →

Posted in Erich Martel, Ethics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Some Common Core Salespersons’ Salaries: DC Edu-Blob-ulants

Posted on 21/05/2016 by Richard P Phelps

Linked are copies of Form 990s for Marc Tucker’s National Center for Education and the Economy (NCEE), Checker Finn’s Fordham Foundation and Fordham Institute, and Bob Wise’s Alliance for Excellent Education (AEE). Each pays himself and at least one other … Continue reading →

Posted in Common Core, Education policy, Education Reform, Ethics, research ethics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Censorship at Education Next

Posted on 20/05/2016 by Richard P Phelps

In response to their recent misleading articles about a fall 2015 Mathematica report that claims to (but does not) find predictive validity for the PARCC test with Massachusetts college students, I wrote the text below and submitted it to EdNext … Continue reading →

Posted in Censorship, College prep, Common Core, Education journalism, Ethics, information suppression, K-12, research ethics, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment | Tagged , | Leave a comment

PEISCH SAYS REPEALING COMMON CORE WOULD BE “HUGE MISTAKE”

Posted on 27/04/2016 by Sandra Stotsky

It seems that some Massachusetts representatives don’t think that parents, teachers, and administrators should be allowed to vote on a secret ballot whether they want to keep Common Core’s inferior standards or return to the state’s superior standards junked by … Continue reading →

Posted in Common Core, Education policy, Education Reform, Ethics, K-12, Mathematics, Reading & Writing, Sandra Stotsky, Testing/Assessment | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Fordham Institute’s pretend research

Posted on 12/02/2016 by Richard P Phelps

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute has released a report, Evaluating the Content and Quality of Next Generation Assessments,[i] ostensibly an evaluative comparison of four testing programs, the Common Core-derived SBAC and PARCC, ACT’s Aspire, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ MCAS.[ii] … Continue reading →

Posted in College prep, Common Core, Education policy, Education Reform, Ethics, K-12, Mathematics, Reading & Writing, research ethics, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Common Core’s Language Arts

Posted on 08/09/2015 by Richard P Phelps

It is often said that scientific writing is dull and boring to read. Writers choose words carefully; mean for them to be interpreted precisely and, so, employ vocabulary that may be precise, but is often obscure. Judgmental terms—particularly the many … Continue reading →

Posted in Common Core, Education policy, Education Reform, Ethics, K-12, research ethics, Richard P. Phelps, Testing/Assessment, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Jay Mathews: pt 1 of 3 pt Review of Caleb Rossiter ‘s new book: “Aint Nobody Be Learnin’ Nothin’: The Fraud and the Fix for High Poverty Schools”

Posted on 17/05/2015 by Erich Martel

Mayor, Council Members, State Board of Education Members, This is assigned reading.  It’s time to take off the rose colored glasses and stop the routine affirmations of “I support education reform” without looking past the polished press releases.  Please stop … Continue reading →

Posted in College prep, Education Fraud, Education policy, Education Reform, Erich Martel, Ethics, K-12 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment