With liberty and justice for all
A scant thirty-one words, the Pledge of Allegiance both unifies and divides. Take a trip through the Pledge’s history in a dandy new book by Peter Meyer—a Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow here at Fordham.
A scant thirty-one words, the Pledge of Allegiance both unifies and divides. Take a trip through the Pledge’s history in a dandy new book by Peter Meyer—a Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow here at Fordham.
Education philanthropy types may want to check out "With the Best of Intentions: Lessons Learned from K-12 Philanthropy," an upcoming conference at the American Enterprise Institute. Heavy-hitters abound, including representatives from the Carnegie Corporation, Gates, Brookings, Annie E. Casey, and a little-known funder named Fordham.
Michigan Future Schools is now accepting applications to open college-prep high schools in Detroit. High-quality EMOs, take note!
Mike and Janie discuss Fordham’s new paper on Common Core implementation and governance, and get into the sort-of good, the oh-so-bad, and the ugly truth of teachers unions. Amber shows how great Montgomery County is, and Amanda admires the Maine outdoors.
Rick Hess--director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, and Education Gadfly Show co-host-has some words of wisdom for us.
Cambridge calling your name? The Harvard Graduate School of Education is tapping the job market. Currently open are three positions: Project Manager, Senior Program Manager, and Research Analyst/Statistical Programmer.
Gotham Schools’ new job board is already boasting some eye-catching postings for New Yorkers. And the site’s even sweeter for those looking to hire. Be one of the first forty to post a job, and the listing is free. Access the job board here.
The National Council on Teacher Quality is hiring. Open positions include one project manager slot and several research analyst openings. Find more information here; inquiries should be directed to Pat Giles at [email protected].
The Policy Innovators in Education Network (PIE-Net) is seeking a Director of Communications and Public Affairs. This media guru would work with the Executive Director to improve the Network’s internal communications and expand PIE-Net’s membership and visibility.
Are you crazy about citrus and sunshine? The Florida Schools of Excellence Commission--an independent, state-level commission whose focus is the development and support of charter schools--seeks an executive director. See here for more information.
*/ table.MsoNormalTable { } --> Do you enjoy collaborating with attorneys about legislation and writing policy papers for clients? Do you understand the federal education budget and appropriations process? Do you? If so, you may be a perfect fit as a legislative associate for a federal education law firm.
You won't want to miss this week's debate between Mike and Stafford about teachers cheating, corporate sponsorship in schools, and praise-worthy union leaders. Then Amber explains positive news about ProComp, while Janie sends BP a bill for lost tax-based school dollars.
Ohio has one of the most stringent academic “death penalties” in the country for our charter schools… Of course the same rules don’t apply to district schools, which have virtually unlimited opportunity to remain open and seek improvement, regardless of whether they actually do…. Thirty-nine district schools in Ohio were awarded SIG funds.
We welcome several new additions to our Ohio and D.C. staffs. In Dayton, Althea Barnett and Kathryn Mullen Upton are managing our charter school sponsorship work and Allison Porch is analyzing education in the Buckeye State. In D.C., Martin Davis, Liam Julian, and intern Michael O'Keefe are toiling away at Gadfly and ushering in a new wave of reports.
Wide-ranging presentations and lively discussion today at the AEI/Fordham conference on judicial involvement in education!
Last week, Laura Pohl (Fordham's new media director) and I had the privilege of visiting our Ohio colleagues. A particularly memorable part of the trip was peering in on two charter schools in Columbus that Fordham sponsors (authorizes). Both schools are in their first year and both serve just one grade at the moment, but will expand.
Teachers in Australia are being told to avoid using red pens to mark their students' work, because the color can be seen as aggressive. Huh? I had to re-read that one, just to make sure I understood.
Anyone interested in what to do about America’s most persistently failing schools--and especially those caught up in today’s turnaround craze--should consider Part II of this report [2009 Brown Center Report on American Education] a must-read.
Jack Kemp, former congressman, cabinet secretary, and VP nominee--and one of my favorite politicos of all time--passed away on Saturday. Kemp had a stellar professional football career and then turned his preternatural energy and good humor
With all of the attention directed toward the DC voucher program, we could be misled into believing that this represents the current and future of the private school choice debate.
Detroit is probably our most battered city...I don't know how things are going to play out, but I suspect that there's a better than even chance that DPS will require a major intervention, whether it's because the system can't make payroll, the school board asks for substantial outside assistance, or something else.
Despite the rainy weather, early morning start, and day-before-Thanksgiving scheduling, the CAP event with Secretary Duncan and NYC Mayor Bloomberg was standing room only. Going in it wasn’t at all clear what the actual purpose of the event was (
As Mike just wrote, Secretary Duncan was at the National Charter Schools Conference today, and he spoke about turnarounds.
Eduwonk has...a charter post up that I need to take issue with—if not with this exact position, then with the issue to which it speaks. His basic case is that district superintendents are district superintendents not superintendents of their cities’ charter sectors.
There are lots of very interesting and very exciting elements in the teacher section of Florida’s RTT application.
Kentucky may have the most maddeningly indecipherable teacher section of any state RTT application. It certainly has as weak a section as any of the finalists.
Possibly the biggest surprise of RTT scoring was that Louisiana came in 11th place (out of 16 finalists). I had them in second.
I just had a chance to tackle Steven Wilson's "Success at Scale in Charter Schooling," an AEI Working Paper that generated a good bit of buzz late last year. Wilson found that the vast majority of teachers in the best urban charters are graduates of the nation's most elite colleges.
Yesterday, ED released its “proposed priorities” for the Investing in Innovation (or i3) fund, a $650 million program embedded in the federal stimulus legislation. I give the document a full treatment here, but here’s a quick and dirty explana