A constitutional moment for American education?
Vacation gave me the opportunity to catch up with a bit of early American history, particularly the eventful last two decades of the 18th Century.
Vacation gave me the opportunity to catch up with a bit of early American history, particularly the eventful last two decades of the 18th Century.
The New York State Regents shenanigans will be just one of the big issues with which newly minted State Chancellor of Education David Steiner needs to contend.
Earlier this summer, Terry wrote about the disconnect between DC and the states when it comes to education policy.????
Quotable "If we could Twitter Julius Caesar, we'd be good." --Terisa King, teacher at Richard Milburn Academy, talking about the need to make difficult language in literature more understandable for students.
Executive Office of the President, Council of Economic AdvisersJuly 2009
Celeste K. Carruthers, Urban Institute & National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education ResearchJune 2009
President Obama put the graduation-rate debate front and center in March, when he noted that the nation's high-school dropout rate had tripled since the 1970s (see here). The media and education community scrambled to react to the president's claim.
Ohio's budget problems and efforts to reformulate education policy reminded former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft of his days as the state's chief executive from 1999 to 2007. Like Gov. Ted Strickland, Taft had his own economic and education pains that included disagreements with members of the Ohio General Assembly.
In June 2009, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) released A New Model Law For Supporting The Growth of High-Quality Public Charter Schools.
The banks of the Ohio river don't initially seem to be a hotbed of education reform.??
Very good Post editorial on saving the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Eduwonk on getting new duds and contributing to a good cause.
Why do unsubstantiated remedies-like smaller class sizes-gain such traction in the world of education? Rather than adhering to rigorous research standards, we resort to sweeping generalizations and sentimental stories about children's lives. Not that there is anything wrong with sentiment.
Quotable "It was one area [where] we didn't do enough and failed our children. I give myself an 'F' on that one. As a city, as a state, as a country, we need to protect our children and have them be safe." --Arne Duncan, on the violence in Chicago's public schools.
Yesterday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to reauthorize and strengthen the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program.
Thomas Friedman wrote of golfer Tom Watson's run at this year's British Open,
Quotable "[That disproves] another myth - that private schools do not serve students with special needs." --Terry Stoops of the John Locke Foundation, discussing their recent report that seeks to dispel myths about private schools in North Carolina.
Though this Ed Week article is ostensibly about the Department's desire to expand the list of districts eligible to apply for the $650 million innovation grant program, it includes a much more news-worthy and troubling story line.
If you're interested in the replication of great schools--one of the key innovations of the charter mechanism--check out this informative paper by the folks at the Center on Educational Governance.
As both Russo and Politics K-12 reported, Mary Ellen McGuire is apparently headed to the White House to work for the Domestic Policy Council on education. This has me a bit curious.
Bill Jackson is the founder and CEO of GreatSchools, an independent, nonprofit organization that improves education by inspiring parents to get involved.
Quotable "It's encouraging that even before a penny has been doled out, this aggressive stance is forcing states to rethink traditional approaches to education." --Washington Post editorial, describing Obama's demands for accountability and an increase in charter schools.
Naomi Chudowsky and Victor ChudowskyCenter on Education PolicyJuly 2009
Government Accountability OfficeJune 2009
Detroit's schools are in a pickle and state-appointed emergency financial manager Robert Bobb is ready to extricate them from the brine.
President Obama's attention to high school dropout rates has brought an already-contentious issue to the national scene. The U.S. can hardly be expected to compete in a global economy with so many of its young people failing to make it to and through their senior years, or so the argument goes.
It appears increasingly likely that President Obama and Secretary Duncan are at risk of doing to charter schooling, merit pay, and school "turnarounds" what the Bush administration did to educational accountability. That's not meant as a compliment.
Violent video games are no new addition to the world of electronic entertainment; it seems hardly a jump, skip, or hop, then, to find iPhone apps with those same violent tendencies. But not all material is acceptable for target practice. RetardedArts, developer of the iPhone app "Zombie School," was a bit slow on this realization.