And better and better

This week, the good news never ends.

Out with the education czar?

Gov. Ted Strickland may not have formal control of the Ohio Department of Education, but he got half of what he wanted last week when Superintendent Susan Tave Zelman announced her resignation (see here). The news wasn't a surprise.

Cell phones help kids' writing, at least if they're writing in Canadian

The explosion of cell-phone text-messaging, especially among young people, has ignited a debate about what the practice means to the skill of writing.

It's time for Dayton district and charter schools to collaborate

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about Dayton Public Schools during the last year. Seldom does a week pass without a front-page article or an editorial describing the profound challenges facing the district.

Closing a charter is painful, difficult work

Fordham has learned a lot about sponsoring charter schools in the last three years. Now we've gained experience in the unfortunate task of closing some schools. The Omega School of Excellence, and East End Community School, in Dayton, and Veritas Cesar Chavez Academy, in Cincinnati, will not reopen next year.

Universally distressing

From Ed Week: States that set easy targets during No Child Left Behind's early years will now??"have to make annual gains of 10 percentage points or more in the proportion of students scoring as proficient in those subjects...."

Closing the internship gap

From this Palm Beach Post article, about college graduates??who have??a tough time finding jobs:

Teachers want relief from union contracts, too

While Eduwonk Andy and Leo Casey of the United Federation of Teachers spar about teacher collective bargaining agreements and whether or not they "prevent educational innovation," some

Seattle's best contribution to the education discourse in decades

The Seattle Times is into the third day of its series on the "resegregation" of the Seattle Public Schools.

Reading First 101

Still trying to get your head around the recent Reading First evaluation? Do you work on Capitol Hill and want to give your member of Congress a quick overview of the hub-bub?

Does Eduwonkette think teachers are racist?*

That's one implication of her recent post about

Re: Does Eduwonkette think teachers are racist?

If high-quality teachers don't want to work in schools where students of one race predominate (a claim that seems dubious, for the reasons Mike points out), this fact??remains: students at lots of schools are going to be of the same race. Alas, housing patterns make it so.

Teachers playing hooky

Mike just quoted this from the Rocky Mountain News: Nearly two dozen teachers from Denver's Montclair Elementary took a field trip of their own Friday--to their union headquarters to urge a vote on the school's six-week-old request for autonomy.

Re: Teachers playing hooky

My short post today on the decision of a couple-dozen Denver high school teachers to skip school last Friday did not sit well with one commenter and at least one educator. The commenter wrote:

Teachers lounge reading

The key to a pleasant commute

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A ray of hope

Amid all the news of doom and gloom, here's one reason for optimism: America's best spellers appear to be getting better and better.

Those silly Canadians

Baffled by America's arcane process for electing a president, the Edmonton Sun's Edward Greenspan has this to say:

More trouble

The latest issue of Commentary contains a review of Checker's newest book, Troublemaker. It's available here for subscribers.

Ed reform, finished

With the release of every new education report, it seems, we hear from commentators that the findings are promising but certainly do not constitute a "silver bullet" or a "panacea" for k-12's problems. No longer.

The GOP's education problem

Republicans should be thankful that, according to Rasmussen,* education ranks only sixth out of ten issues for American voters right now, because Congressional Democrats are opening up a big

More science, please

Brian Greene, a Columbia professor who wrote two top-selling popularizations of

Leaving Canada

In response to Mike's question: "Yes."

Standardized Testing: The Musical

It seems that students at top colleges can't soon shed the feelings of anxiety that accompanied their hypercompetitive high-school careers.

Everyone's special, round 2

My recent post on special education (SPED) had one education scholar emailing me to

Jesus loves No Child Left Behind

Or at least compassionate conservatism, of which NCLB is a cornerstone. So implieth Michael Gerson in this morning's Washington Post.

Yes, they are! No, they aren't!

Boys are being left behind, the Economist tells us.

Higher-ed education

John Hood, president of the John Locke Foundation, writes in National Review a solid, sweeping article about higher education. It's currently available only to subscribers (they, and hackers, may read it here). Some good parts:

Cliche

The problem here elicited is a problem--at??least because it engenders a lot of boring writing--and I'm convinced that it's getting worse. (No, I don't have data to support that.) Today's k-12 system generally ignores writing and today's colleges demand lousy writing, so there you go.

Vouchers for NOLA

Worth keeping an eye on this, especially because "the Senate plan would require schools to administer state tests to voucher students."