Education News Nuggets

While Joel Klein braves a blizzard during his last week as NYC schools chancellor,

Checker Finn: Thumbs-up on Obama's k-12 education themes

On primary-secondary education, as on most??topics,??Mr.

Quotable and Notable

???A public school like Berkeley High has an equal obligation to students who have struggled.?? We shouldn't be continuing to allocate resources to students who have had them all along.??? -Philip Halpern, Berkeley High School teacher

Era of big education spending still upon us

Just 24 hours ago I wrote about the news that President Obama will propose to freeze discretionary spending in his State of the Union address tonight.

Arne Duncan's secret grand jury

Ed Week's Michele McNeil broke the news last week that Arne Duncan has decided not to release the names of the "Race to the Top" reviewers--until after the competition is over and grants have been announced.

SOTU: Is education really the best anti-poverty program?

Just a few minutes ago, President Obama said that "in the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a first-class education." Sounds like a throwaway line, and hardly objectionable. And??this very sentiment??motivates many of us who spend our days working to make the?? U.S.

Real charter accountability

I'm as big a fan as there is of the work that Chancellor Klein and his team are doing in NYC to build a new system of public education. Given the size of the district, its historical challenges, and the city's politics, it's astonishing how much they've accomplished.

Quotable and Notable

"There's something unseemly about tax dollars being used for lobbyist fees... that go after additional tax dollars." ??? Nebraska Sen.. Bill Avery

Bring charters in from the cold

Can Ohio finally bring itself to see charter schools as an asset, and not a liability? It is in the interest of the state, its education system, and its children to do so.

Head Start Impact Study Final Report

US Department of HHSJanuary 2010

Proposal would allow online coursework to make up for snow days

School districts and STEM schools should be able to assign online work to students to make up for calamity days, according to legislation introduced earlier this month in the Ohio House of Representatives. 

Reevaluating the meaning of teacher commitment

Yesterday Terry responded on Flypaper to remarks made by the president of the Dayton Education Association (DEA) as to why the union turned down up to

School Funding Advisory Council questions the effectiveness of evidence-based funding model

The Ohio School Funding Advisory Council had its second meeting last week.

School Principals and School Performance

CALDER at the Urban InstituteDamon Clark, Paco Martorell, & Jonah RockoffDecember 2009 

Can Race to the Top decisions really be politics-free?

Ohio has joined 39 other states and the District of Columbia in submitting its Race to the Top grant application to the Feds…. Whether or not Ohio’s plan is bold enough, and competes well against other states, is now awaiting the determination of reviewers at the U.S. Department of Education.

Deloitte 2009 Education Survey Overview: Redefining High School as a Launch Pad

Deloitte LLPNovember 2009 This national report assessed, from the perspectives of students, teachers, and parents, the purpose of high school. To some of us, the answer appears manifest: to prepare students for post-secondary education and successful careers. However, the results from this survey portray a culture that believes otherwise.

KIPP culture, Arne Duncan, school lunches, and more

What do Gap Inc., FedEx Corp, Southwest Airlines Co., and high performing charter schools have in common?

Obama launches his "Race to the Center"

Well that didn't take long.??Just a few weeks ago the conventional wisdom was that federal education spending would go up, up, up forever.

Changing the district

More great stuff out of New York City and Baltimore. The leaders of both systems have realized that the old district model is irreparable broken, so they're creating something new.

Event: ed reform in Obama's first year

Don't miss tomorrow morning's event at AEI, where a group of panelists (Cain, Carey, Hess, Schneider, and me) will discuss the major education reform happenings during the Obama administration's first year. --Andy Smarick

All about Arne Duncan (New Yorker style)

The New Yorker has a lengthy profile of Arne Duncan in its??February 1??issue. A colleague of mine??pointed out this segment in particular: ???Duncan, who is forty-five, is six feet five and long-limbed, with a pale face that tapers to a wedgelike chin.??? ....Nice.

Take our Poll! Is the 'Race to the Top' a rip-off?

Thirteen bucks. That's the cost of the ???Race to the Top??? for every man, woman, and child in the United States. (You do the math: $4 billion divided by 300 million.) Chump change, and well worth the investment, considering the flurry of recent state education reform activity motivated by the federal program, right?

Morning news

The Washington Post weighs in on Maryland, the nation's most disappointing RTT state ED to unveil new National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies

Quotable and Notable

"If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards among young children, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it." ??? Dr. Clare Wood, Reader in Development Psychology, University of Coventry

Now that the applications are in...

Now that the dust has settled from the stampede of states turning in Race to the Top applications and media outlets far and wide covering the deadline from every angle possible, our attention should turn to making sure this promising program does as much good as possible. How do we make sure the money doesn't go to sustain the status quo like previous ARRA education money?

Big changes to ESEA?

The ESEA reauthorization issue that most intrigues me is the extent to which Secretary Duncan is serious about moving ED away from compliance and toward incentives. He's alluded to this from time to time, and I wrote about it briefly about a month ago.

Maryland defends its title

A while back, I called Maryland the most disappointing Race to the Top state in America.

A welcome reprieve and a new phase

After literally months of daily stories in local and national newspapers about Race to the Top--often dozens per day--today my Google Reader account had ZERO articles on the RTT.

Quotable and Notable

???They put too much borrowing and Band-Aids on basic education. They can't do that forever. That's why there is really a crisis right upon us.??? ???Kenneth Cull, Superintendent of Illinois School District 69

Video: Road to the Education Reform Super Bowl