Arne Duncan just announced 19 finalists for Race to the Top round two, including Ohio, saying that these applications represented the boldest reforms (and by ?bold,? that means those in the top 51 percent of the 36 states plus?DC?to submit).
An interesting article in the July 10th edition of Newsweek illustrates a growing ?Creativity Crisis? facing US students. Creativity has always been considered a key to continued US strength, but general creativity scores for US students have been falling consistently since 1990.?
Well, as you've probably seen/heard by now, there are 19 finalists for the federal Race to the Top Phase 2 competition (35 states and the District of Columbia had applied.) Education Secretary Arne Duncan made the announcement during a speech at the National Press Club earlier today.
Arne Duncan is going to announce the finalists in the second round of the Race to the Top tomorrow, the significance of which is?nothing. The Secretary is free to name as many states as he wishes, which is precisely what I suspect he'll do.
With the common core standards seemingly on their way to mass adoption it's time for us to turn our eyes to the next step of the Common Core: nati
Mike appeared on ABC News on Saturday, discussing the North Carolina school busing fray. If you haven't heard, the Wake County school board recently decided to stop busing students, thus prompting accusations of school resegregation. Watch the video for more.
?Every child in a District of Columbia public school has a right to a highly effective teacher ? in every classroom, of every school, of every neighborhood, of every ward, in this City. That is our commitment. Today . . . we take another step toward making that commitment a reality.''
The??common core? state standards for grades K-12?have been released. Much will need to happen if these standards and related assessments are to get traction in American education over the next few years. But we at the?Fordham Institute are looking even further ahead: we're considering the issues that will determine the long-term viability of this endeavor.
I was on a panel yesterday with Josh Edelman, the director of the Office of School Innovation at the District of Columbia Public Schools. Just 20 percent of DC students attend their neighborhood public school. I asked him how many DCPS students attend school ?out-of-boundary.? His answer? 70 percent.
Today in the New York Times, reporter Tamar Lewin wrote about the growing college-completion rate gap between the U.S. and other countries. The US previously led the world in 25-34 year olds with college degrees, but now ranks 12th out of 36 developed nations.
We've all learned from Mel Gibson that recorded racial epithets are very poor for job security. Could a republican controlled Congress save the Obama presidency?
?But the reality is, if we don't do something, all of the important programs, not only public defense but we're talking about children's programs, after-school programs, education, senior programs, everything that we care about as progressives is going to be lost because it's being sucked up by the cost of pensions?
The Common Core is the latest chic accessory for states to adopt. As of today, 29 states and counting have adopted. But look back four years, and national education standards weren't even a twinkle in Arne Duncan's eye. According to a Thomas B.
Attention parents: if you can't get your boys to read, why not try some potty-humor? It might make him more productive.
?[The National Standards are] a beginning point for us all to be on the same page in education.'' ?Dotti Love Wade, Member of the D.C. State Board of Education
Richard Lee Colvin, Betsy Hammond, Dale Mezzacappa, Sarah Garland, and Thomas TochWashington MonthlyJuly/August 2010
Andrew Hacker and Claudia DreifusTimes Books2010
Jacob Vigdor and Helen LaddNational Bureau of Economic ResearchJune 2010
Grover J. Whitehurst and Michelle CroftBrown Center on Education Policy, Brookings InstituteJuly 2010
It was a bit slow on the uptake, but Rhode Island last month finally created its first ever state education funding formula. (It was, in fact, the only state without a formula until now.) These formulae are usually a big muddle that give districts and schools little autonomy, even as they try to even out dollars between property-tax rich suburbs and lower-income urban areas.
Gadfly has generally been skeptical of Wake County, North Carolina’s busing plan, overturned this year by a new school board majority, focused as it was on making schools socioeconomically diverse more than on ensuring that their pupils lear
After votes yesterday in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, twenty-nine states have now embraced the new “Common Core” standards for primary and secondary education.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is on a cost-cutting warpath in the Garden State. His latest bull’s eye: superintendent pay. New Jersey has a whole lot of notoriously small school districts—591 of them—which not only adds up when it translates into paying 591 supes, but also encourages bidding wars between districts that drive up salaries.
This study weighed existing state education standards against the Common Core education standards. The findings? The Common Core standards were clearer and more rigorous than English language arts standards in 37 states and math standards in 39 states.
As you know if you've read the New York Times, Associated Press, Washington P
?It makes sense for us to adopt these standards and move forward? I have confidence that these standards are not going to knock us off course, but would build on the strong legacy of academic excellence that we have in Massachusetts.''
The K-12 academic standards in English?language arts (ELA) and math produced last month by the Common Core State Standards Initiative are clearer and more rigorous than today's ELA standards in 37 states and today's math standards in 39 states, according to the Fordham Institute's newest study.
G. Gage Kingsbury, Allan Olson, John Cronin, Carl Hauser, and Ron Houser, Northwest Evaluation AssociationJanuary, 2004
