Reg is no Lech

Here's a fine wrap-up, from Ed Week (subscription required, but

From the Dept. of Odd Headlines

"Gambling addict gets 18 months for embezzling schools" It started with small stuff, like overhead projectors. But when she bet the library in a game of high-stakes hold???em, the clinic on red, and the playground on Federer, and lost them all, administrators suspected something was amiss.

Priorities

Yesterday, he who is the Democrat presumed nominated, Barack Obama, said this: You know, I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, "We need to have English-only." They want to pass a law, "We want English-only."

More on Louisiana

Good study, bad spin

That's my take on the new Marcus Winters/Jay Greene/Julie Trivitt study on the impact of high-stakes testing on low-stakes subjects in Florida.

Re: Hands-on demonstration

Didn't we come out in favor of burning crosses into students' flesh??in our recent report, Who Will Save America's Urban Catholic Schools???Or am??I confusing??cross-branding with another of our??recommendations,

From the Dept. of "Say Wha?"

Eduwonkette provides a fine example of the??educational gobbledygook that we must??hack away in order to find some clarity. Here's a snippet:

Still don't get it

Mica Pollock, an "anthropologist of education," which I assume means that she excavates fossilized Australopithecus pencil boxes in the Olduvai Gorge, graciously comments about my last post (in which I quoted from an interview with her about her new book):

Three cheers for broken government

Word around Washington is that Congress is unlikely to finish its appropriations bills before the election and may choose to pass a yearlong "continuing resolution" for all of fiscal year 2009.

Show me the...

Education Week looks at how much money??each presidential candidate would??devote to schools.

Hands-on demonstration

Bobby Jindal may be wrong in trying to get religion back into science classrooms but at least he's playing by the (text)book. MSNBC reported yesterday that a science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, burned crosses into the arms of his students.

Only in Hyde Park

Mike's post about the Obama girls sent me briefly to the website of the University of Chicago lab school

Why Michelle Rhee is different

Rereading this Washington Post article on Michelle Rhee's plan to woo teachers into ceding tenure and seniority privileges, I noticed a passage near the end that illuminates a different ed policy discussion:

Right op-ed, wrong subject

Kudos to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings for taking to the pages of the Washington Post to defend DC's

Pure pork?

The Cristo Rey network of schools (featured in our Catholic schools report) may benefit from a Cong

Louisiana's law: unevolved thinking

An article on NRO defends Louisiana's evolution muddle, a muddle that Governor Bobby Jindal has done much to bring about. The author writes:

American Politics Aren't 'Post-Racial'

Thusly titled was Dorothy Rabinowitz's??article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, a piece that looked at the race-based shenanigans that??affected one student at Purdue University.

Diversity's diversions

A post from guest blogger and Fordham intern Amy Ballard.

Fifteen minutes

Eduwonkette lands a profile in today's New York Sun.

From the U.K.

"Children as young as three should be reported for 'racism', Government-funded group claims"

While you were watching tennis...

Rod MacKinnon, former head of Bexley Grammar School (one of the U.K.'s most popular; it accepts approximately one pupil out of every nine who apply), took to the pages of the Telegraph yesterday to denounce a Labor government that views schools as tools for so

A new school for service?

Two friends have an op-ed in today's Tallahassee Democrat calling for the establishment of a national public service academy, a "civilian West Point for our best and brightest public service-minded women and men."

First children

Is Clive Crook anti-American?

Probably not, but since I missed last week's patriotismpalooza, I figure I have some catching up to do.

Hail to their chief

Highlights of Obama's speech to the NEA this weekend can be found here, amid quite a bit of applause (except for that pesky reference to teacher pay).

Scapegoating race

In Washington Post front-page news this morning, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA, has reported its freshman class of 2012 will be 45 percent Asian--and only 42 percent white. Crisis! (Really, though, front page news?

A new take on merit pay?

When New Jersey Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy called the severance package of the retiring Keansburg, N.J., Superintendent, "an absolutely outrageous, excessive, ridiculous package to pay anyone," she didn't really mean "anyone." "Anyone" does not include high level consultants and traders, CEOs and chairmen, or partners from big firms who routinely receive these sorts of financia

Defensibility police

Kevin Carey tags my opinion about private colleges and prep schools, which he doesn't care for, with the word "indefensible." That I am hereby defending it proves Mr. Carey's label logically wrong, and I hope he will retract it.

Rubber room resolution

There's been a development in New York City's "rubber room" controversy.

Philly inches toward weighted student funding

New Philadelphia schools CEO Arlene Ackerman is making an impression right away; the Philadelphia Inquirer reports: