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Education News Nuggets
Want to learn how to improve children's lives? It's more than just fixing schools. And if you're not already busy this weekend, maybe it's time to get buzzy.
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Quotable & Notable
?The debate shouldn't be about whether a school is a traditional or charter public school.? It should be about whether it's high-performing, period.'' * -Joel Klein, Outgoing Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education
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Event highlights: Are Education Schools Amenable to Reform?
Well, we held yet another interesting and valuable event here at Fordham on December 2.? The topic at hand was a crucial one: Are Education Schools Amenable to Reform?
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The Brighter Side of IT: Figment.Com
That's the name of the new website for literate and literary teens being unveiled by New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear and former New Yorker managing editor Jacob Lewis.? (This, according to this morning's Times.)
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Context matters, but so does getting the fundamentals right
Review: How the World's Most Improved Systems Keep Getting Better
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Dayton Urban League ceases operations after 63 years
Dayton is the Fordham Institute's hometown. Thomas B. Fordham made his fortune here and he and his wife are buried in the city's Woodland Cemetery.
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Special education, back in the spotlight
The special-education system has long been a thicket of politics, social obligations, massive spending, and (mis)diagnoses.
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The dark side of IT: Cyberbullying coming to a school near you
I might not have appreciated today's front-page Times story about cyberbullying if I hadn't received a?barrage of text messages this morning from a school aide?mad?at me?she said she was ?too enraged? to call?for a newspaper story I was quoted in.?
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The great compromise of 2010
High drama in NYC: Cathie Black got her waiver from State Commissioner David Steiner on the condition that she team up with Shael Polakow-Suransky. Wait, who? Black's new number two is a former Gotham teacher and principal currently employed by the NYC Department of Education's central office, as well as an alum of the Broad Superintendents Academy.
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Smile! You're on Not-so-Candid Camera
Sam Dillon? tackles the question of teacher evaluations in the Times today with a front-page ?story pegged to Bill Gates' investment of $335 million in overhauling teacher evaluation systems.
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Education News Nuggets
There is no need for high school seniors to despair, for while tough economic times make fewer traditional scholarship dollars available, there are some new unconventional scholarship opportunities popping up: via
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To infinity, and beyond!
Over the past decade, digital learning at the K-12 level has exploded?from a national enrollment of?40,000-50,000 in 2000 to an estimated 3 million in 2010. And this trend line is sure to get steeper, way steeper, in coming years.
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Quotable & Notable
?And we must all accept that [school] choice is part of securing the civil right of high-quality education.? * RiShawn Biddle, Editor, Dropout Nation
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Hudson Institute Event (happening now!)
Fordham's Chester Finn will be speaking today at a Hudson Institute event, entitled, The 112th Congress and
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Re-imaginging local control
Writing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, my friend and long-time former co-author, Diane Ravitch, challenged resurgent Congressional Republicans to return K-12 education to ?local control?
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Heading south?
Who, after all, can resist that sunshine and all those casual, wavy palm trees? Not Michelle Rhee, it seems.
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School Fights: Who's In Charge?
Another YouTube video making the rounds shows a furious fistfight between two Florida middle schoolers ? taken, of course, by a fellow student with cellphone.
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Field notes: Minding your peas & chicken nuggets
While Michelle Obama was celebrating the House vote on the $4.5 billion school lunch bill yesterday, I was having a power lunch with a couple of 3rd graders at my local intermediate school.
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Special education, 35 years later
It was thirty-five years ago that President Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). This was a watershed moment in American society, as it made our public schools accessible to children who had been shut out (or shut into dark corners of school basements) for too long.
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Education News Nuggets
Here's an update on a few new initiatives to boost student achievement, some innovative, some contentious: high-tech school buses, kindergarten literac
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Quotable & Notable
?Evidence has shown that special ed is one of the academic ghettos of American public education.'' * -RiShawn Biddle, Editor of Dropout Nation
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Unbecoming
It took two months for the New York City Education Department to fire Melissa Petro, a Bronx elementary school teacher who had written a Huffington Post article and sundry blog posts about her sexually adventurous past, including some time spent?shedding her clothing at a club in Mexico and her stin
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Fired up, ready to go
At the recent Washington, D.C., educational forum hosted by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie, gave the keynote address. Speaking about his state's teachers' unions, Christie said, ?It is an obscenity?an obscenity?that those who claim to be involved in public education for kids aren't just as offended and just as impatient as I am.?
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Special education, back in the spotlight
The twin pressures of budget cuts and accountability are spurring calls for change
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How the World's Most Improved Systems Keep Getting Better
Context matters--but so does getting the fundamentals right
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