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Jerry Weast and his many detractors
Often it's hard as a writer to know if you are having any impact, in fact to know if anyone is even reading your stuff.
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Make up your mind, please, Gov. Strickland
Gov. Strickland needs to make up his mind about what to do with persistently failing schools in Ohio.
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A truce in the voucher wars?
There's encouraging news out of Hillsborough County, Florida this morning, the home of Tampa and the eighth largest school district in the country.??The headline from the??St.
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The South and gentrification, two key drivers for school reform
So I argue in today's Education Gadfly. Read it here.
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Morning news
Not too much breaking news in the education world during these quiet August days. Secretary Duncan has even????decamped to the Last Frontier state.
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Meta-errata
As always you should read this week's????Gadfly (and listen to the????podcast while you're at it, though I've been
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Assessing students
Today at a conference hosted by the Alliance for Excellent Education, titled Teachers'??
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The Tradeoff Between Teacher Wages and Layoffs to Meet Budget Cuts
Marguerite RozaCenter on Reinventing Public Education, University of WashingtonJuly 2009
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No more shortcuts
Echoing last week's Texan attempt to keep dropouts in school, currently-enrolled Florida students might think twice before taking that state's GED early exit.
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Power check
After much squabbling and power grabbing, the New York state legislature has given mayoral control of New York City's schools back to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, thirty-eight days after the six-year old measure expired.
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Rhode Island gets the Gist
We predicted that Deborah Gist would bring her hard-knock reformer skills to Rhode Island, possibly manifesting in an overhaul of that state's timeworn, ineffectual teacher evaluation system. This seems to be exactly what she plans to do.
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Skipping class or class skipping
Here's one way school districts can cut costs and increase student learning: embrace "grade skipping" for their most advanced pupils. So argue Laura Vanderkam and Richard Whitmire in a recent Ed Week commentary.
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Greener pastures
Refuting the widely-held notion that charter schools cater almost exclusively to urban communities and minority students, the Columbus Dispatch reports that suburban and rural students are making up an increasing percentage of charter school rolls in the Buckeye State.
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For progressive school reform, look South
If you ask education experts to name cutting-edge spots for reform, they are likely to list Washington; New York; New Orleans; and maybe Denver. These are certainly the cities whose systems and superintendents have gotten the lion's share of press attention recently.
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A first-rate education for all
If America's elementary and high schools laid a sounder educational foundation for more of their students, America's colleges would be far more successful at constructing a solid and artful edifice atop it.
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Tongue-twister
Gadfly was beset with a startling case of G 'n R letter confusion in last week's Recommended Reading, "A conflict of interest." The last name of the mayor of Los Angeles is Villaraigosa, not Villagairosa.
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Progress in the rust belt and charters
Excellent Ed Week article on Detroit schools Baltimore schools CEO thinks his district can become a national model
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Plagiarism!
Everyone knows that Internet plagiarism is a big problem, but now it looks like it has infected the education policy world. To what do I refer? The Alliance for Excellent Education, which is always trying to rip off Fordham's best ideas!
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Re: The placid world of American education
The debate in education at the local and state level is far from placid (as Mike recently described it), and is sometimes incredibly toxic because the issues affect our children and our collective future.
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The placid world of American education
I'm just back from vacation, and while Checker spent his holiday reading about how the founders brought our country together, I dug into how "The Big Sort
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Debunking the demonizers of student testing
An op-ed by Cleveland State University education professor Karl Wheatley in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer argues that the pursuit of improved student achievement in our public schools is l
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Friday news
Jay Mathews on the amazing Rafe Esquith MA charter advocates aim to put cap lift on the ballot
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Video: Fun Fact Friday! - Not as hot
The fifth video in our Fun Fact Friday! series looks at how information affects peoples' support for teacher pay increases. Don't miss our first , second , third and fourth videos.
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Finn on American education competitiveness
Checker writes at Forbes.com on the role that both quality and quantity must play in American education.
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Eating our young
During these tough economic times, one expects to hear news of budget shortfalls, such as Ohio's South-western school district's $5 million budget hole
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Good articles
It's August but some interesting stories are still out there... Ed Week's Klein with info on the Innovation Fund
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Learning from the locals
Although the decentralized nature of public education in this country has its drawbacks--i.e.
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Help wanted
When recently released graduation rate statistics were greeted by the business community with a hefty dose of skepticism, Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott decided to call on employers, and the Texas Association of Business in particular, to voluntarily stop hiring folks who haven't made it through that teenage rodeo--high school.