Tracking and Detracking: High Achievers in Massachusetts Middle Schools
Tom LovelessBrookings scholar Tom Loveless examines tracking and detracking in Massachusetts middle schools, focusing on changes that have occurred and the implications for high-achieving students. Among the findings: detracked schools have fewer advanced students in math than tracked schools and detracking is more popular in schools serving disadvantaged populations.
Nation's biggest RTT disappointment
Maryland may be the biggest disappointment in the nation when it comes to the Race to the Top. It hasn't lifted a finger to change laws or policies, as perfectly noted in this scathing editorial.
The implications of tracking and detracking
Our latest report, "Tracking and Detracking: High Achievers in Massachusetts Middle Schools ," analyzes the implications of tracking, or grouping students i
Changing "value added" terminology
Jamie Davies O'LearyWhen Emmy returned from a Midwest REL conference on educator compensation in October, she brought with her a Center on Education Reform report on "alternative compensation terminology." Not the most scintillating title, but the paper had some persuasive takeaways.
Fixing Special Education: 12 Steps to Transform a Broken System
Miriam Kutzig FreedmanSchool Law Pro and Park Place Publications2009
The Nothing Curriculum
Just when you thought reality-TV had sucked the life out of your every brain cell, the creators of the TV show “Lost” figure out a way to wring out the last drop. They think of it as a way to keep the show’s cult following intellectually engaged.
The same old from Albany
In what the New York Times generously described as “baby steps,” the Empire State’s appalling legislature last week passed several spending reforms designed to close the state’s $3.2 billion budget deficit.
Off track
Chester E. Finn, Jr., Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.By 2011, if the states stick to their policy guns, all eighth graders in California and Minnesota will be required to take algebra. Other states are sure to follow. In recent years, the conventional wisdom of American K-12 education has declared algebra to be a “gatekeeper” to future educational and career success.
Growing Pains: Scaling Up the Nation's Best Charter Schools
Education SectorNovember 2009 This latest report from Education Sector summarizes the operational challenges that face nonprofit charter management organizations (CMOs) as they attempt to grow and support their networks of charter schools.
Lynne vs. Goliath
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) has some powerful supporters, including the NEA, Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft. Fourteen states have also climbed aboard its effort to refocus American K-12 education on global awareness, media literacy and the like--and to defocus it on grammar, multiplication tables and the causes of the Civil War.
Maoist reeducation...in Minnesota
It’s no secret that schools of education teach all manner of nonsense. So when the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development launched its Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group, we might well have expected trouble. But the reality is worse than that.
Nature vs. nurture redux
Is success genetic or environmental? For educators trying to change the prospects of disadvantaged youth, new research on this timeless question might have wide-ranging implications.
Against a big-flower garden
To the editor:Should a thousand flowers bloom in the charter school world? Gadfly thinks not (“No oaks needed,” December 3, 2009), and I agree. But would you extend the reasoning, as I think you should, to the nonprofit world generally?
Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: "The class teaches values that America doesn't really hold that much anymore. ??I've learned to think about cowboy values when tough things come my way."
PA and RTT
Very interesting document from Pennsylvania's state chief to districts regarding the Race to the Top.
Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: "It is no exaggeration to say...that [impending layoffs] will be the end of public education in the city of Los Angeles as we know it, and that is admitting that the service we already provide is not enough."
Three cheers for integrated charter schools
Michael J. PetrilliA recent UCLA Civil Rights Project report lamented that the charter school movement is contributing to the resegregation of our public schools. It's not that charters are allowing white families to escape to exclusive enclaves (as some had feared might happen).
Steve Sawchuk buzzsaws the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
Michael J. PetrilliThis Education Week article about P21 is well worth reading, as is Lynne Munson's no punches pulled post.
Short term gains cause a lot of pain
Michael J. PetrilliTwo recent stories indicate that reform is a lot harder to sustain than to initiate.
School Improvement Grants
Last week, the Department released final documents for the $3.5 billion School Improvement Grant program.
Some interesting stuff
New report: charters make up 74% of schools with extended learning time (charters represent only??5% of all public schools) Gist making it tougher to become a teacher in RI
Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: ???If you're at a hedge fund, [education reform] is definitely the hot cause???These are the kind of guys who a decade ago would have been spending their time angling to get on the junior board of the Met, the ballet.??? ??? Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform
California and RTT
Earlier this week, I spoke to a group of California school board members about the ARRA and RTT. I love talking to these groups because their questions and concerns typically serve as a great wake-up call. That is, what we're talking about in DC is often not at all what's on their minds.
Revisiting the No-Washington-Meddling Doctrine
Alyson Klein over at Ed Week dug through the Department's SIG application and found two very interesting quotes. The first explains why the Department isn't giving locals more flexibility.
Robert Scott, right-wing Reaganite?
Michael J. PetrilliLet me admit upfront that I don't know Texas Education Agency Commissioner Robert Scott hardly at all; I think I've been in the same room with him once or twice. But his reputation is as a thoughtful policy wonk and adept administrator-a "good government," non-ideological type.
I Love New York
New York City (followed closely by New Orleans) is my favorite city for education reform.
Common Core Standards update
Amber M. Northern, Ph.D.I had the soggy pleasure yesterday of trudging, in the pouring rain, over to 101 Constitution Ave. for the latest update on the Common Core Standards Initiative from NGA and CCSSO. Apparently attendees didn't mind getting wet because it was a packed house.