THE SITUATION IS FLUID
Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham takes a second look at a much-discussed study that seems to indicate charter schools raise test scores, but not “fluid intelligence.” The results are “fascinating, but they are also easy to misinterpret,” he writes.
BOSTON COMMONS
Boston is getting a “chief of education,” who will cultivate relationships with allschools in Boston—public, charter, parochial, and private—plus Boston’s colleges and universities—“although he will not have direct power over those institutions,” notes the Boston Globe.
LACKING LEADERS, THE SEQUEL
Writing at Slate, Dana Goldstein says the school principal “just might be the most important figure in school reform.” But you already knew that.
OPT OUT OF...VACCINATIONS?!
California parents are deciding against vaccinating their kindergarten-age children at twice the rate they did seven years ago, the Los Angeles Times reports. Health experts say that’s contributing to the reemergence of measles.
UNCHARTERED WATERS
Seattle’s First Place Scholars today becomes the first charter school to open in the state of Washington.
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME STEM?
TIME Magazine reports the San Francisco 49ers have a plan to bring in sixty kids a day from Bay Area schools for daylong STEM education programs, focusing on the engineering of stadium construction and the physics of football.
SCREECHING TO THE TEST
As Lee County, Florida opts out of opting out, Fordham’s Petrilli notes that school boards might take similar “symbolic actions,” but “at the end of the day as long as they need the funding...we're going to see districts administering the test." Ain’t that the truth.
