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Award well deserved
Kudos to Scott Stephens for being recognized by the Education Writers Association for his terrific reporting work in 2009 for Catalyst Ohio!
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Back to Basics: Why "common standards" are good for American education
For five good reasons, conservatives should take seriously the potential of the newly released (in draft form) “common” education standards to strengthen U.S. education.
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The Online Learning Imperative: A Solution to Three Looming Crises in Education
Alliance for Excellent EducationBob Wise & Robert RothmanFebruary 2010
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Update: Can Race to the Top decisions really be politics-free?
Almost since the contest was announced,????those of us working in Ohio have????wondered whether Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's Race to the Top decisions could really be politics-free.
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GE Lighting is NOT in Cincinnati
In our last issue, Gadfly erroneously reported that GE Lighting is based in Cincinnati, when any student of Ohio history should know that the Lighting & Electrical Institute is housed at the
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Interesting news from the pod-waves, the blogosphere, and Romania
Education Next featured TBFI president Chester E. Finn, Jr.
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Columbus Collegiate Academy wins prestigious national award, will share best practices
Columbus Collegiate Academy, one of six charter schools authorized by the Thomas B.
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Common Core standards are a smart move for the Buckeye State
Ohio has positioned itself to be among the first states to adopt the “common” academic content standards, created through a state-led process coordinated by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association Center fo
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Drew Carey cares
When asked how he would go about improving Pittsburgh, Frank Lloyd Wright offered a simple solution: “Abandon it.” But that Price-is-Right hosting, Michael Moore look-a-like (minus the baseball hat and hammer-and-sickle) Drew Carey won’t drop the commitment to his hometown Cleveland that easily.
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Who Benefits from KIPP?
National Bureau of Economic ResearchJ. Angrist, S. Dynarski, T. Kane, P. Pathak, & C. WaltersFebruary 2010
Report
Standards
Review of the Draft K-12 Common Core Standards
The Fordham Institute's expert reviewers have analyzed the draft Common Core K-12 education standards (made public on March 10) according to rigorous criteria. Their analyses lead to a grade of A- for the draft mathematics standards and B for those in English language arts. Read on to find out more.
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Broader, bolder, and broke
The Senate version of the health care bill is now law, and as this New York Times blog post explains, a few key provisions go into effect right away.
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Massachusetts, RTT, and a sense of resignation
A sense of resignation has set in as I've gone through the details of state RTT applications. States, including the finalists, are not proposing the bold, game-changing reforms this program deserves. Massachusetts is just the latest finalist with a timid approach and plenty of delayed decisions.
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NPR's Intelligence Squared asks if teachers unions are to blame
Who said the decline of the mainstream media would be deleterious to healthy, informed debate? (Moreover, who said it was healthy and informed to begin with?)
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Curriculum & Instruction
Common Core education standards get A- and B from Fordham experts
Anyone who's been following the debate over national standards knows that two weeks ago, the National Governors Association (NGA) together with the Council of Chief State Schools Officers (CCSSO) released the much-anticipated public draft of the K-12 math and English language arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards.[quote]
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Arne "Jellyby" Duncan?
That's the charge from George Will, who picks up on Joshua Dunn's recent Flypaper post to give the Secretary of Education a hard time for crusading for "civil rights"
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Who says standards are a substitute?
The Wall Street Journal penned a convoluted editorial this morning on national standards.
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Turnarounds, Duncan, and CGCS
Important and worrisome Ed Week article on Secretary Duncan's speech to the Council of the Great City Schools. Urban superintendents want even more flexibility on turnaround rules. That's bad news. Rather than closures and new starts, here's more reason to believe we're going to see more of the meek and ultimately unsuccessful interventions of the past.
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Implications of Louisiana's disappointing application
The section on teachers in Louisiana's RTT application is considerably weaker than I expected. This should bring us pause since LA is not only a finalist but also, in the conventional wisdom, among the??front-runners.
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How in the world is Kentucky a finalist?
Kentucky may have the most maddeningly indecipherable teacher section of any state RTT application. It certainly has as weak a section as any of the finalists. After reading it three times, I still can't figure out how teachers will be evaluated--and that's supposed to be the core of the entire section.
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Coming to a theater near you: The "rubber room" documentary
A new documentary film focuses on New York City's infamous "rubber rooms" and finds teachers sleeping, doodling and (in at least one case) forming a musical duo. The eight rubber rooms are places where banned teachers await their disciplinary fate -- with full pay. According to an article in the New York Post:
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Quotable and notable
"Bottled water we stopped doing, stopped buying textbooks. But, we did very carefully not lay off anybody." ??? Tom Budde, superintendent, Central Union High School District in southern California
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IL: another weak RTT finalist
My level of frustration with RTT applications--and the Department's decisions on finalists--is growing.
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Randi Weingarten says something nice about Obama's ESEA plan
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, gave a mostly robotic interview to NPR's All Things Considered yesterday.
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Fickle on federalism
Education reformers on both sides of the aisle are torn between pressing for their preferred policies from Washington, DC, and acknowledging the federal government is too far removed from classrooms to do good without doing harm, too.
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UFT charter report
James Merriman, the head of the New York City Charter School Center and former chief of SUNY's Charter School Institute (a state authorizer), writes a level-headed assessment of CSI's decision to grant a short-term renewal to the UFT's charter school in NYC.
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