There are all sorts of new ways to let kids wiggle while they learn. But glance in the window of an elementary school classroom, and you may just see students wobbling behind their desks on stability balls. Seems these brightly colored inflatable balls aren't just a Pilates accoutrement after all.
My feet aren't frozen, but as the march toward national or "common" academic standards trudges through deepening snow, they're getting chilly. Evidence is mounting that those who take curricular content seriously may not like what we find at the end of this road, and I worry that America could be headed toward another painful bout of curriculum warfare.
Economists take note: there is a free lunch, and it's a cheese sandwich. Albuquerque, New Mexico is facing a troubling problem: students who show up to school without their lunch money. (Mind you, these are children who aren't eligible for the official federally-funded "free lunch" program.) In the past, the district has absorbed the cost of delinquent lunch tabs--i.e.
Will Garden State voc ed schools give traditional high schools a run for their money? Seems that way--and in more ways than one.
Defaulting on a $2.3 million loan may spell the end of Fresno, California's KIPP Academy, one of the few high-performing middle schools in the district. The school needs a $5 million grant from the state to stay afloat, but the Fresno Unified School District is withholding its much-needed endorsement.
There's been a lot of chatter the past few weeks about President Obama's efforts to shift the American political center sharply to the left. Universal health care, caps on carbon emissions, and steeply progressive taxation have in recent years been considered "liberal" positions.
Interesting article in the New York Times about the proliferation of charter schools in Harlem. This borough has a substantial and growing share of NYC's charters. But what's with the headline? The article certainly shows the ???????more choices in Harlem,???????
With less than $50 billion of discretionary spending, the US Department of Education's 2010 budget seems downright quaint compared to the money it's getting through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
I'm still making my way through the pile of reports that I put off reading for the last year and a half, and I'm finding some very interesting stuff.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan made some waves today. In this Associated Press story he said poor children receiving vouchers to attend private schools in the District of Columbia should not be pulled out of school. Duncan opposes vouchers but said that D.C. is a special case.
At the??National Assessment Governing Board's??20th anniversary event today at the National Press Club, Secretary Duncan is talking with passion about nearly all the important reforms--but he's also horrified by the prospect of class sizes growing if any teachers get laid off due to the recession.
Charter schools in Ohio are under serious threat. The governor has presented a state budget that would cut funding for charter schools to the point that most schools would have to close, while all would face increased regulation.
Charter schools in Ohio are under serious threat. The governor has presented a state budget that would cut funding for charter schools to the point that most schools would have to close, while all would face increased regulation (see above).
Whether schools, including those in Ohio, make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under federal law is as much a product of inconsistent rules set by state education officials as of actual pupil achievement, according to a new study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Substitute House Bill 1, the legislative vehicle for Gov. Strickland's biennial budget proposal, was introduced last week. At more than 3,100 pages, the bill is massive, and its education section alone numbers more than 700 pages. It is a tall, but necessary, task to quickly analyze the budget bill and understand what its many education-related provisions mean for Ohio's schools and students.
Diane Ravitch (see here) is a research professor and educational historian at New York University, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a former assistant U.S. secretary of education, a nationally renowned education expert and author, and a Thomas B.
Let me start by saying how glad I am that Andy Smarick is guest-blogging on Flypaper. I've known Andy for many years and think he's one of the smartest thinkers in education (see this great Education Next piece by him, for instance), and also among the world's nicest guys.
I've gotten a lot of feedback about my post yesterday regarding Achieve and its efforts (along with the NGA, CCSSO, etc.) to move states toward "common" standards.
I just had a chance to tackle Steven Wilson's ???????Success at Scale in Charter Schooling,??????? an AEI Working Paper that generated a good bit of buzz late last year. ????Wilson found that the vast majority of teachers in the best urban charters are graduates of the nation's most elite colleges.
I'm delighted to report that our debate was so powerful and compelling that the AEI staff, after reading our comments, arranged an event to dive deeper into these very matters! (Just kidding, though we shouldn't underestimate the far-reaching powers of this blog!)
We're not the only ones saying that anymore! So is Marguerite Roza, a bona fide researcher at the University of Washington.
Word came late last week that Chicago lawyer Charlie Rose (no, not that Charlie Ros
I can't even begin to explain the confusion, disappointment, and exasperation I feel about Achieve right now, the organization that's purportedly??all about pushing states to raise standards.
I think possibly the biggest mistake we've made in K-12 urban education is elevating the importance of a school's sector (traditional public, charter public, or private) above its academic quality. That is, rather than distinguishing schools based on how well they serve disadvantaged kids, our politics and policies distinguish them based on who operates them. Think of all of the ???????us vs.
If the state of Ohio were a charter school, it could see its public funding frozen and lose its authority to open new offices and agencies. According to the Columbus Dispatch:
Girl Scouts badges are so 20th century. Moms as troop leaders for teenagers? Also pass????. But educating young women and providing the public with yummy cookies? Well, those Do-Si-Dos and Samoas will never go out of fashion.
As reported by Steve Sawchuk at Education Week's Teacher Beat blog, Philadelphia superintendent Arlene Ackerman has moved to turn some of her lowest-performing schools into charters.
By my calculations, it's been more than three weeks since the Obama Administration announced a new appointment for the Department of Education.
This week's Education Gadfly should have you riveted: Checker and Mike respond to President Obama's address to the nation (in which he talked tough about everything...except education) and panelists at an event for the releas
