The dunce cap wasn't our idea

And neither was the headline, but you can find??Checker's and my??National Review Online article about President Obama's education agenda here.

Senator Voinovich: Pro-DC voting rights, pro-DC kids

Hooray for Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, who has conditioned his (praiseworthy) support of D.C. voting rights in Congress on the extension of the city's federally-funded school voucher program.

21st Century Skills get schooled

I hope you enjoyed my live-blogging of the Common Core event on 21st Century Skills on Tuesday, but for a more coherent overview see this lucid post from Core Knowledge's Robert Pondiscio.

PISA smackdown

I've just finished reviewing the latest Brown report from Tom Loveless at Brookings for this week's Gadfly. And it's a good one.

Turning around schools

(This is the first guest post to come from Andy Smarick, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education where he helped manage the Department's research, budget, and policy functions.

The 2008 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well are American Students Learning?

Tom LovelessThe Brookings InstitutionFebruary 2009

Inside Urban Charter Schools

Katherine K. Merseth et al.Harvard Education PressJanuary 2009

Life Without Lawyers: Liberating Americans from Too Much Law

Chapter 5, "Bureaucracy Can't Teach"Philip HowardW.W. Norton & Co.January 2009

School Choice Yearbook 2008-09

Geoffrey Goodman et al.Alliance for School Choice and Advocates for School ChoiceFebruary 2009

The Congressional barnyard

What has pork, cash cows, and ritual sacrifice? Why, the Omnibus Spending Bill of 2009, finally speeding through Congress. Yes, that's right, the plain ole budget for fiscal year 2009, which began, by the way, back on October 1, 2008.

The day of reckoning has arrived, except for education

President Obama's address to Congress is earning plaudits for its honesty, candor, and can-do/will-do/must-do spirit.

Cutting class

Districts and states across the land are all making changes to save some change. A few are even eyeing the long-sacred cow of small class sizes.

Magna charters

If you lead a charter school that's about to be closed for poor performance, how do you fight back? Well, you might misrepresent successful schools on the editorial page of your local newspaper. Sounds bizarre that but that's the tactic employed by Michael Mayo, executive director of Uphams Corner Charter in Massachusetts, whose charter has been revoked by the state.

National standards--not if but when

In 2006, Fordham published a report with the playful name To Dream the Impossible Dream, which outlined several plausible paths to national academic standards. That dream seems less impossible today.

Who's LOLing now?

Once upon a time, little Susie was sent to the office for the errant spitball or wayward paper airplane landing in Ms. Beasley's coiffed beehive. Fast forward to 2009 and Susie--or in this case, a 14-year-old troublemaker from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin--has instead landed herself in the pen for a misuse-of-technology infraction. Her offense?

Obama: The day of reckoning has arrived, except for education

Another milestone in the march toward national standards

As reported by The Hoff at Education Week's NCLB Act II blog, earlier this week the nation's governors unanimously agreed to work toward common (i.e., national) standards. Were it not for our imploding economy this surely would have been front-page news.

Congressional Democrats versus poor kids

Nancy Pelosi's troops are on quite a tear. First they went after Reading First, a program that by most accounts is doing wonders helping disadvantaged children gain basic literacy skills.

Be careful what you wish for

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland surprised most observers (including us) when he left the state's education voucher program intact in his biennial budget proposal. The Educational Choice Scholarship is available to up to 14,000 students assigned to chronically underperforming public schools.

Live blogging the 21st century skills debate

Greetings from Fordham's 7th Floor conference room, which is jam-packed with a standing-room-only crowd to hear a debate about the "21st Century Skills" movement, staged by Common Core. Here's the line-up: Panelists: Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education, New York University

Live blogging the 21st century skills debate: Ravitch says it's deja vu all over again

Diane Ravitch, an historian of education, is carefully deconstructing the "21st Century Skills" movement by demonstrating that its key ideas are direct descendants of loopy nostrums from the past 100 years. "The cause that animated schools of education throughout the 20th century??was the search for the one discovery that would unshackle schools from teaching content," she said.

Live blogging the 21st century skills debate: Hirsch says P-21 is patriotic but wrong

Don??Hirsch, founder of Core Knowledge and author of Cultural Literacy, says that students do, indeed, need these "21st Century Skills." But, he's arguing, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is deeply misguided in its understanding of how students can develop these skills.

Live blogging the 21st century skills debate: Willingham questions P21's assumptions

Dan Willingham is a cognitive scientist, and takes P21 apart step by step. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills assumes, he says, that first, knowledge and skills are separate. But research shows that not to be true.

Live blogging the 21st century skills debate: Ken Kay is having an out-of-body experience

Ken Kay, the head of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, is here to defend himself. He says that most of what we're doing in education is subject-matter focused. Most of the assessments are subject-matter focused. But we aren't producing enough students with critical thinking skills. So clearly subject-matter is not enough.

The new deal

The latest Education Next is out, and its cover story is an excellent piece by Richard Lee Colvin previewing the Obama education agenda and contemplating the Democratic Party's schism over school policy.

What, me worry?

Imagine, you have been laid off and you can't find another job earning anywhere close to what you were making. Your savings have been decimated by the disaster on Wall Street. You may be renting now that you lost your home. Maybe your pension is a lot less, too.

Playing games with NCLB

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Introducing The Obama Reform-o-Meter 2.0

Do you wait anxiously for another Obama Reform-o-meter???Do you refresh the Flypaper homepage repeatedly or check your RSS feed hourly wanting to see how the Administration is doing? Well your prayers are answered: Obama Reform-o-meters 24-7.

Linda Darling-Hammond bows out

As first reported by Politics K-12 yesterday, Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond has decided to return to Palo Alto rather than seek a top position in the Obama Administration.

The economic stimulus bill: Not so hot for education reform

With the stroke of a pen on Tuesday, President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan became the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I'm no economist but I certainly buy the president's basic argument about the need for such a stimulus.