Turning around bad schools is harder than turning around Chrysler, GM, or AIG--but our fearless, tireless, irrepressible new federal administration seems bent on doing this, too. Just listen to Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the topic of closing and "reconstituting" failed schools.
Politicians often get themselves into hot water for "flip-flopping" on an issue. Jefferson Township High School students learned this lesson the hard way--and literally. These Ohio high schoolers, days away from year's end, planned a daring defiance of authority: they would stand up to their school's no-flip flop rule by all wearing flip flops on the very same day!
Policymakers, what do you do when your state's newly adopted high school exit exams might result in a precipitous drop in graduation rates? Give failure a pass. Yes, that's right; if you're a Minnesota high school student, you have two options when it comes to the allegedly "extraordinarily challenging" eleventh grade math exit exam: pass once or fail three times.
Loyal Flypaper reader (and American Institutes of Research VP) Mark Schneider has suggested a great new contest idea: Name the education sector's best aptonym!
Just a day ago, I expressed encouragement that Secretary Duncan's ARRA threats may have started making a difference on state policy.
Back in March, Checker, Mike, Amber and I wrote a paper called When Private Schools Take Public Dollars: What's the Place of Accountability in School Voucher Programs? We proposed a sliding-scale mechanism: the more money a private school receives from voucher-bearing students, the more a
The American Enterprise Institute is holding an event next Tuesday entitled, "Schoolhouses and Courthouses: Does Court-Driven School Reform Deliver?"
New York state's test scores in math were released yesterday, and not surprisingly they were up, up, up.
NYT's Dillon writes about Secretary Duncan's turnaround plans. This article makes it sound like Duncan is in favor of 10s.
It appears that Illinois is about to raise its charter cap. Secretary Duncan must be smiling. He has made clear that states wanting to compete for discretionary stimulus funds must show they are serious about reform, by, among other things, lifting charter caps.
Checker has an op-ed up at The National Review's "The Corner" blog, in which he compares and contrasts the auto industry's bankruptcies with the education system's.
Ohio Senate Democrats today said Republicans want to step backward in education, that Gov. Ted Strickland and the Ohio House have identified what needs to be done in schools and how to do it, that the evidence is clear on the issues, and that more money for education -- when the economy revives -- will be there, too.
According to Ed Week, 46 states have agreed to work together to create common standards in math and ELA.
During his speech Friday at the National Press Club,????Secretary Duncan again talked passionately about the opportunity for reform and improvement.
This LA Times piece tells the story of American Indian Public Charter (and its two sibling schools) in the "hardscrabble flats of Oakland;" schools that are--according to the story's provocative title--"spitting in the eye of mainstream education." At the "small, n
Common Core is out with a new report that excerpts national curricula, standards, and assessments from nine nations that consistently outrank the United States on international comparison tests.
Arne Duncan was at the National Press Club (and on C-SPAN ) this morning, being his usual amiable, cheerful, and optimistic self.
I just sat through a very interesting presentation by Teach For America on the way they are using data to figure out which applicants have a better chance of success in the classroom. So this is being put to very good use.
To his great credit, Secretary Duncan has spent the last several months imploring the education world to spend stimulus money on reform-oriented projects. He has been explicit that states and districts should not use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to merely protect jobs.
It came to our attention that many of our loyal readers never received their Gadflies yesterday. We are so sorry to have deprived you of your weekly Thursday reading material!
These kinds of allegations really get under my skin. Why do all politicians who have anything remotely to do with public schools have to send their kids to public school? Isn't the reason that we all work so hard to reform the public school system because we think it doesn't quite work right?
A few months ago, we reported that the NJ Supreme Court refused to kill off the half-dead and long-damaging Abbott v. Burke. Corzine, backed by the New Jersey legislature, had come up with a new funding formula that would no longer favor the 31 poor districts ("Abbott" districts) singled out by the case.
The Washington Post's Jay Mathews dedicates his column today to discussing Checker's new book "Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut," in which Checker takes strong issue with the idea of universal preschool.
