In a provocative new school funding case, a federal court judge in Kansas City ruled against parents from the suburban Shawnee Mission school district who had wanted to increase property taxes above the state mandated limit
Don't miss Katie Couric's 60 Minutes report this Sunday on a New York City charter school that pays teachers lots of money but gives them no tenure.
Even if you can spell i-o-n-i-z-e, you might be attending a high school that is failing under NCLB.
?It's not enough to teach kids how to "read hard stuff." You have to show them how reading hard stuff in AP Literature is different than reading hard stuff in biology, European history, or trigonometry.'' * -Catherine Gewertz, Writer for Education Week
There continues to be a lot of discussion around the idea of creating a ?common? curriculum to supplement the Common Core State Standards. Robert Pondiscio over at Core Knowledge applauds the move, arguing that, while the CCSS are ?praiseworthy,?
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="359" caption="Photo courtesy of the National Governors Association"][/caption]
?Taking on the status quo is no easy task.'' * -Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin
So what else is new?? Isn't this just the statistic that confirms the message of Nation at Risk or the flat NAEP scores for the last forty years?
I know it's an article of faith in the school-reform community that we should "differentiate" among teachers and pay them "differentially" too.
?[Common academic standards] will end the practice of lying to children and adults that dummied down standards will prepare students for success" * -Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education
The New York Times is on a roll with its education coverage, today reporting on everything from Obama in Boston to Rick Scott in Florida and rich schools in Bronxville.?
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="307" caption="Photo by Stacy"][/caption]
Of the many dumb ways to close budget holes, perhaps the one most worthy of the title "self-inflicted wound" is the move to reduce the number of extra-curricular activities offered to students (or to pass along the costs to families in the form of fees).
I don't relish piling on, but David Brooks's column today, ?The New Humanism,? timed to coincide with the release of his new book The Social Animal, is intellectual cotton candy. ?Over the course of my career,? he begins, ?I've covered a number of policy failures.?
?I just can't prioritize making teachers' work environments fair, interesting, or pleasant for them--not if there's any potential conflict with the goal of providing the best possible education for kids.'' *
We all know that Checker Finn?has an uncanny?ability to turn a phrase and get right to the heart of the matter. Well, here are a few (very) noteworthy Finn quotes from recent news stories.
It is encouraging to see the New York Times continue its blanket coverage of education issues and events, even if the nation's putative paper of record sometimes misses the mark (see my Inside the Bubble) and even though it insists on giving reform nemesis Michael Winerip full rein.
Take a look at this graph from Robert Costrell and Mike Podgursky's new report on pensions for the TIAA-CREF Institute:
Last week, the National Endowment of the Arts released a new analysis showing a sharp decline in participation in arts education nationwide, with particularly bad news for African-Americans and Hispanics.
In the new Washington Monthly Steven M. Teles, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins, reviews Frederick M. Hess's recently published book The Same Thing Over and Over. Teles is particularly attentive to ?Hess's argument?
Columnist David Brooks has a new New York Times blog that, he writes, will ?be about who you are and why you do what you do.? His description is not a promising start.
?If what we want to do is help our neediest children get ahead ?we need to find opportunities for them to do the things that privileged families do?solid academic programs combined with an engaging array of enrichment experiences.'' *
Today, education leaders from across the nation (including our own Checker Finn) came together to endorse the idea of creating a national, voluntary, common curriculum that would be designed to supplement the national, voluntary, Common Core ELA and math standards.
Reading yesterday's New York Times editorial about the Empire State's fiscal crisis, I couldn't ?help but think of the last days of the USSR. I'm sure there were many Soviets scrambling to move the deck chairs around while that?ship was sinking.
Almost fifteen years ago, I was sitting in the main auditorium at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, getting ready to start my sophomore year at a public, residential magnet school that billed itself as a "pioneering educational community." What I remember most is how much the dean of students talked about the possibility of failure during that or
