What a difference a mile makes

Broad Acres and Adelphi elementary schools are neighbors serving an impoverished corner of the Washington, D.C. suburbs that is home to thousands of recent immigrants.

Senate bill could boost charter schools' effectiveness, but opponents prefer killing charters altogether

Improvements have been made to Ohio's charter-school law over the past several years and some in the Senate are considering further changes to strengthen charter accountability. Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives legislators are seeking to kill charters completely. 

Strickland's long-time advisor says the guv has jump-started debate

First Lady Frances Strickland is one of Governor Ted Strickland's closest education advisors. The Ohio Education Gadfly interviewed Mrs. Strickland in the wake of her husband's State of the State address, in which he proposed revamping the state's educational bureaucracy. The "over-emphasis" on standardized testing is harming public education, she argues.

Fordham study shows how labor agreements can thwart innovation

Collective-bargaining agreements can have a tremendous impact on virtually all aspects of school-district operations, yet they pass under the public radar in many communities.

KIDS COUNT data center valuable source of info

For a reliable, user-friendly source of data about the lives of children outside the schoolhouse, look no further than the Annie E. Casey Foundation's KIDS COUNT data center. 

about the Gem City

Fordham's Vice President for Ohio Programs and Policy, Terry Ryan, wrote an op-ed piece for the Dayton Daily News that also ran in the last Gadfly contrasting the "two Daytons" (see here).

Bubble kids

David Hoff reports that Senators Clinton and Obama are calling for new kinds of tests under No Child Left Behind.

Oden for Obama

Update: The NBA's number 1 draft pick is against???i.e., not supportive of, never has been and never will be,

Seattle times tables

Students in Washington State have had to deal with some dismal math standards (we gave them an F in 2005). Finally, last year, the legislature decreed that those standards should be reviewed and if necessary revised.

Closing the Expectations Gap 2008

Achieve, Inc.February 2008

Teachers' union psychology 101

Fordham's latest report, The Leadership Limbo, is a valuable resource. It's inevitable, though, that I approach this issue from a somewhat different angle, considering what I do: focus on and cover the inner workings of the teachers' unions.

Partial Win for Sunshine State

Florida's State Board of Education this week approved newly revised science standards after a long process that, in its final stages, turned contentious over the subject of evolution, a recurrent problem topic for Florida as for several other states. The 4-3 vote enshrined evolution in the Sunshine State's curriculum.

Speakeasy

We learn from Britain that requiring those whose fluency in a foreign language is being tested actually to speak in that language is "too stressful." This week, the U.K.'s Qualifications and Curriculum Authority abolished oral examinations for students taking foreign-language GCSE exa

Cross the unions: Yes he can?

It is not per se wrong to enjoy watching movie star Scarlett Johansson sing breathily about change in America. Millions have, in fact.

Anchors away

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee seems to understand the "fierce urgency of now." The third part of PBS education correspondent John Merrow's fine ongoing series of reports on Rhee's efforts to turn around the D.C.

Three cheers for dead, white men

Dead, white male authors are much maligned but not forgotten. Thousands of educators continue to teach F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, for example, despite repeated salvos from the forces of political correctness.

Taking tests too far

High-stakes tests are useful in a lot of ways. This isn't one of them. According to the Palm Beach Post, several of Florida's previously fired teachers are being reinstated after an appellate court found that their students' test scores were not factored into the dismissals. A state law requires that student performance be part of any teacher evaluation.

The Leadership Limbo

It's no real surprise that, after years of lurking menacingly in the shadows, The Contract has emerged into the spotlight, indeed has leaped to the top of the education policy agenda. Sooner or later, the purveyors of any number of flavors of school reform were bound to see their prospects entangled with teachers' collective bargaining agreements.

Open wide

Before Sol Stern's City Journal article pitting "instructionists" against "incentivists," there was Ted Kolderie et al's white paper contrasting "innovation with school and schooling"

Improving Teaching Through Pay for Contribution

Emily Ayscue Hassel and Bryan C. HasselNGA Center for Best Practices2007

Insecticide in our schools

Gadfly was repulsed, horrified, stunned to learn that several of his cousins, crickets to be precise, were recently consumed by a Florida middle-school principal in celebration/lamentation of his students' academic success.

Dropping coin

A statewide task force in Maryland recommends requiring youngsters to stay in school until the age of 18 (today's pupils can leave legally at 16). This move, promises the task force, will keep more Old Line State students from dropping out, which may or may not be true.

Entering unchartered waters

Is the charter movement--which has sputtered along, making steady but slow progress--finally ready to kick it into high gear? Signs in New York point to yes, say USA Today's Richard Whitmire and Eduwonk Andy Rotherham.

Mike Huckabee: The next great education secretary?

After his victories in this week's Potomac Primary, Senator John McCain is predicted to have greater than a 90 percent chance of sealing the GOP presidential nomination, according to the Iowa Electronic Markets.

When Research Matters: How Scholarship Influences Education Policy

Edited by Frederick M. HessHarvard Education PressFebruary 2008

Gadfly021408

The devil is in the details

In his second State of the State address, Governor Strickland kept with his tradition of not distributing hard copies of the speech ahead of time and not providing supplemental information about his proposed programs and policies.

School boards: fish, cut bait, or get out of the way

Mark Twain once quipped that God, for practice, first made idiots. Then he made school boards.

Dayton: a tale of two cities

As someone who has been working and living in Dayton for the past seven years, I am constantly reminded of the fact that there are, in fact, two Daytons.