Big news in Baltimore
The schools chief in Baltimore unveiled a laudable????plan last night to close low-performing schools, expand high-performing schools, and continue opening new schools. Very exciting stuff.
The schools chief in Baltimore unveiled a laudable????plan last night to close low-performing schools, expand high-performing schools, and continue opening new schools. Very exciting stuff.
I agree with Amber's post on the demise of the DC voucher plan. ????I'll add four quick things.
The Senate passed its $410 billion budget bill yesterday and rejected an amendment that would have restored funding for the DC voucher program (vote was 58-39). This means that the 1,700 students enrolled in the scholarship program will likely have to return to the failing schools they left. Sen.
I spent yesterday guest-lecturing at a reputable education school about the role of the federal government in education. These last-semester teaching candidates appeared bright and interested, yet I walked away feeling as if they knew far too little about the policy issues surrounding the profession they were about to enter.
President Obama delivered a major, long (over 4,500 words), and substantive speech on education this morning. Transcript here; coverage here
With Mike away on vacation, I get the keys to the vaunted Reform-o-Meter. Certainly President Obama's big speech today deserves to be taken for a spin.
Just a quick sidenote about the speech this morning. Obama complained pretty emphatically about state standards and the current system--50 different sets of standards, from the lowest-of-the-low to the highest-of-the-high.
(Guest blogger Laura Bornfreund is a Fordham Fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute)
In his first major education speech since taking office, President Obama made the case for charter schools as incubators of innovation and excellence in public education.
In his classic book, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them,??E.D. Hirsch describes the education "thought-world," born from schools of education but dominant throughout the education system.
I'm heading out of town this evening for a spring break, but before I do I thought I'd check in and give our Reader Reform-o-Meter a check. As loyal Flypaper readers know, whenever we put someone or something through the Reform-o-Meter treatment, you get to voice your vote, too.
The Cincinnati Public Schools have been praised (including by yours truly) for embarking on top-to-bottom overhauls of the district's most persistently underperforming schools.
First, I'm thrilled to be affiliated with TBFI and have the chance to contribute to Flypaper.???? Thanks Checker, Mike, Eric, and team.???? It's been great.
So here's an inspirational article about a once-struggling Florida school that pulled itself up from a "D/F" rating to an "A" rating two years in a row (and they expect a third "A" this year).
I've already parsed the meaning of Arne Duncan's statements about Washington's school voucher program (he doesn't think vouchers ???ultimately are the answer??? because they're not ???ambitious???
You don't want to miss this spectacular issue (and enjoy it too, since Gadfly's taking his spring break--woo hoo! Cancun!--next week and will return to your inboxes on March 19).
Check out our long-overdue "The Accountability Illusion" event video. You can read the full report here. Don't forget to check out our "Fix That Failing School" video game!
Roberto Agodini, Barbara Harris, Sally Atkins-Burnett, Sheila Heaviside, and Timothy NovakMathematica Policy Research for Institute of Education SciencesFebruary 2009
Robin Chait and Michele McLaughlinCenter for American ProgressFebruary 2009
There are all sorts of new ways to let kids wiggle while they learn. But glance in the window of an elementary school classroom, and you may just see students wobbling behind their desks on stability balls. Seems these brightly colored inflatable balls aren't just a Pilates accoutrement after all.
My feet aren't frozen, but as the march toward national or "common" academic standards trudges through deepening snow, they're getting chilly. Evidence is mounting that those who take curricular content seriously may not like what we find at the end of this road, and I worry that America could be headed toward another painful bout of curriculum warfare.
Economists take note: there is a free lunch, and it's a cheese sandwich. Albuquerque, New Mexico is facing a troubling problem: students who show up to school without their lunch money. (Mind you, these are children who aren't eligible for the official federally-funded "free lunch" program.) In the past, the district has absorbed the cost of delinquent lunch tabs--i.e.
Will Garden State voc ed schools give traditional high schools a run for their money? Seems that way--and in more ways than one.