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The effects of competition
For those??who doubt that competition has positive effects on public-school systems, this article , from the Houston Chronicle , is instructive.
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Your BlackBerry is racist
Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist/political cartoonist??David Horsey comments on the now-disbanded Office of Equity, Race, and Learning Support of Seattle Public Schools.
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South Carolina races to the bottom
With overwhelming votes in its House and Senate, South Carolina is racing to revamp its state assessment system and, apparently, lower its standards dramatically. The Spartansburg Herald Journal says:
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Flypaper cited in Chronicle of Higher Ed
Flypaper is the source for this Chroncle of Higher Education story, which profiles McCain's education team. We revealed McCain's edvisors last week, here.
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Nope, not a silver bullet
The American Enterprise Institute's education scholar, Rick Hess, has a new piece out about mayoral control of district schools. Basically, Hess concludes that mayoral control is no panacea for a city's educational problems... so cross it off your "Educational Panacea" list.
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The Blaine game
Nice to see that at least one state is trying to exorcise its anti-Catholic demons . If??the country cares about saving its Catholic schools , it should hope Florida's efforts are elsewhere replicated.
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Get the newest Gadfly
This week's Gadfly is now available for public consumption. Fordham's nascent research director, Amber Winkler, makes her Gadfly debut with a smart editorial about Reading First (she says it's not yet dead).
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Don't scoff at voc ed
Check out this New York Daily News column about career and technical education (formerly vocational education).
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Make way for the United Way?
It's not quite as bad as Marion Barry embracing vouchers, but is it necessarily a positive development that the United Way has selected dropout prevention as one of its three key initiatives?
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We're good mentors
It's tough to capture a summer internship at Fordham. Expectant mothers often email us tabula rasa resumes on behalf of promising blastocysts, in fact, to be updated as??Embryonic Emmy??and Zygote Zach grow and garner accomplishments over the impending score. This summer, however, we have an unexpected internship opening!
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Bloggers summit features anti-blogging bloggers
Someone once wrote, "You can't trust Alexander Russo to report on a school bake sale and give an accurate account of the price of brownies," so one hesitates to put much stock in this post.
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Funding fundamentals
School Funding's Tragic Flaw ,??a new paper from Education Sector's Kevin Carey and Marguerite Roza of the Center on Reinventing Public Education is a nice, quick introduction to the reasons that school funding is often inequitable and unfair and??under-funds the neediest schools.
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Blurry lines
To further illustrate the point that contamination may have occurred among Reading First and presumably "non" Reading First schools, a point I made in my piece in??today's Gadfly,??Connie Choate, the director of Arkansas Reading First, writes:
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A Nation Accountable: Twenty-five Years After A Nation at Risk
U.S. Department of EducationApril 2008
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The Effect of Special-Education Vouchers on Public School Achievement: Evidence from Florida's McKay Scholarship Program
Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. WintersCenter for Civic Innovation, The Manhattan InstituteApril 2008
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Achievement and Attainment in Chicago Charter Schools
Kevin Booker, Brian Gill, Ron Zimmer, Tim R. SassRAND CorporationMay 2008
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Raising standards right
I appreciated Gadfly's recent coverage of Massachusetts ("Wishing for a Massachusetts miracle?"). About 18 months ago, the Massachusetts Board of Education raised the state graduation standard, but in a flexible way.
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Reading First: Not dead yet
The interim evaluation of Reading First has all sorts of people upset for all manner of reasons.
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Hammer time in California
Arnold Schwarzenegger revels in his role as an unconventional politician. How many other Hummer-driving, global warming-fighting Republican governors can you name? Yet his big promises, like those of so many elected officials, can evaporate when the heat rises. Observe how his "Year of Education" was scrapped as California realized it was in a fiscal crisis.
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College is not for everyone, but success can be
It is generally agreed that academically able American high school graduates should attend college, regardless of their financial circumstances. That's a time-honored education goal in this country and a worthy one.
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"College ready" was never the purpose
Regarding last week's Gadfly piece "Wishing for a Massachusetts miracle?": The rush to college readiness is muddying the original intent of the graduation requirement of the Massachusetts Ed Reform Law.
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Demanding schools
The Economist aimed its reporting lens last week on charter schools in New York City and Chicago. In the Big Apple, demand for charter schools has overwhelmed supply, especially in Harlem: at the Harlem Success Academy Charter School lottery, 3,600 applied for 600 available spots.
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Let him curse; he's black
The NAACP believes that Anne Arundel County, Maryland, is suspending too many black students.
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Required Reid-ing on Reading First
Reid Lyon, former Reading Czar and one of the creators of Reading First, posted a comment about Shep Barbash's Education Next article
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Keegan jumps in full-time
Lisa Graham Keegan, school reform trailblazer and former state superintendent of Arizona, has quit her day job to spend most of her time working on behalf of Senator John McCain's campaign, reports the Arizona Republic:
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Mississippi miscue
Mississippi has passed legislation, and the governor has signed it, that would fire superintendents whose districts are labeled "under
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Straight from the union's mouth
Here's another interesting video from The New Yorker Conference (those New Yorker people are always so darn interesting!). In this one, the magazine's financial columnist, James Surowiecki, chats with Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern about the future of unions.
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Re: High stakes
Mushy Mike knows it's not news that college graduates live longer than high-school graduates. The article??to which he refers??is a comment on the lousy healthcare that many poor Americans receive, and it really doesn't have??much to do with getting a college education.