Andy Boy received lessons in persistence, patience, and how government can operate in working up to his first day as founder and executive director of the Columbus Collegiate Academy last August.
The Senate passed its version of the fiscal years 2010-2011 biennial budget last week. In K-12 education, it largely maintained the status quo. A legislative conference committee must now marry the House and Senate versions to produce a budget that also plugs at least a $2 billion revenue shortfall by June 30.
Edited by Michael A. Rebell and Jessica R. WolffTeachers College Press2009
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction just released the state's preliminary school ratings under the No Child Left Behind act, and a mere 79 schools were found to be "needin
As part of my book research, I've been looking back on the thinking that led to charter schooling.???? An educator named Ray Budde is often credited with originating some of the basic ideas as well as coming up with the name ???????charter schools.???????
Bees really dislike having their hive disturbed and that's obviously true of universal-pre-school advocates, too.
As you may recall, last week brought news that??math scores were up across the great state of New York.??
Many people know that then-AFT head Albert Shanker gave a speech at the National Press Club in 1988 floating the idea of what eventually became known as charter schooling. But what was the response of the Reagan administration to this new idea? The following quote comes from the New York Times (April 1, 1988):
Those of us in the education world are used to thinking about "competitive effects" thusly: The public education system will do nothing to reform itself unless forced to do so. So we try to force it to do so by threatening to take away students, dollars, and union members by offering parents options outside of the system (via vouchers, charter schools, etc.).
We're fifteen minutes into Fordham's big debate on universal preschool, designed to discuss Checker Finn's latest book,??R
Steve Barnett, the co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, ceded no ground to Checker. He came out of his corner swinging and never stopped. The book is "inaccurate and poorly reasoned," "cherry picks" the evidence, and is full of "errors and exaggerations."
Neal McLuskey from CATO is up and he mostly agrees with Checker. (This is more surprising than you might think. We don't generally agree on much.) But he has two additional points: 1. Over time, programs like Head Start get captured by the people who are employed by them.
Sara Mead of the New America Foundation is taking her turn. She started by holding up Checker's book and commenting (correctly) how similar its cover looks to that of her favorite children's book, The Little Engine that Could. (Still, trust me, don't show Checker's book cover to a small child.
That's what Steve Barnett charged. He thinks Checker is arguing to "hold back" the middle class so that poor kids can catch up and close the achievement gap. Needless to say, Checker doesn't agree with that characterization, but admits that he agrees with (not-so-far-left) liberal Bruce Fuller, who believes in targeting resources on poor kids rather than spreading them around.
Testifying before Congress, Secretary Duncan came under fire from a few Dems for upping the Teacher Incentive Fund and slightly reducing Title I in the 2010 budget.
Potentially interesting charter school hearing on the Hill today. Mayoral control of schools coming to Detroit?
Mad love for charteralliance and edreform for twittering during today's congressional hearing on chartering.
The New Teacher ProjectJune 2009
C. Kirabo JacksonJournal of Labor EconomicsApril 2009
In last week's Recommended Reading "Leadership woes," Gadfly erroneously cited investigative reporting done by The New York Times as research from an as-yet-unreleased New York University study on New York City principals. The NYU study will be available later in June.
The original voucher pioneer, Milwaukee, is now pioneering voucher regulation.
With all the positive press surrounding high-achieving charter schools, it's not surprising that they've turned into the education reformer's go-to point of comparison.
This week's news that 46 states plus the District of Columbia have signed up to pursue common education standards is a big deal but it's also potentially a big nothing. If this effort leads to rigorous national standards and tests in reading and math, historians will view this milestone as historically significant. But nobody has yet committed to anything of the sort.
