Quotable & notable
?If you had a rally tomorrow on the Capitol to keep No Child Left Behind the same, there's not a single person that would show up for that rally.?* ?Michael Bennet, Senator (D-Colo.)
?If you had a rally tomorrow on the Capitol to keep No Child Left Behind the same, there's not a single person that would show up for that rally.?* ?Michael Bennet, Senator (D-Colo.)
Still looking for a job? We empathize ? employment is a veritable pedagogical puzzle.
Florida deserves kudos for protecting about $55 million in funding for charter facilities in the face of budget cuts, but they're catching a lot of flak from traditional school advocates, EdWeek reports:
It turns out Wisconsin's controversial labor law reforms have indeed helped districts cope with their budgets without resorting to layoffs:
?If I saw that [right-to-work states like] Texas and Florida were running a great K-12 system, but [heavy union states like] New York and Massachusetts have really messed this up, then I could draw a correlation and say it's either got to be the union?or the weather.?*
I've already wondered aloud (see here) whether states' quick adoption of the Common Core was more an example of people seeing what they wanted to see than evidence of some broad consensus about what the actual standards meant for curriculum, instruction, and
Does it make any sense to test students in art? I say absolutely! West Virginia gets a B+.
?The theory of evolution is based on almost as much evidence as the theory of gravity.?* ?Lorenzo Sadun, Math Professor at the University of Texas
As colleges drop the SAT requirement, death becomes the only real threat to job security, and
So, the suit by New York City's United Federation of Teachers and the NAACP to block 22 school closures and 15 charter school "co-locations" in Gotham came to naught. And? Mayor Michael Bloomberg, according to Gotham Schools, celebrated by mouthing off on a local radio show:
I talked for a bit last night with a DCPS teacher about IMPACT. While he expressed some concern about the system, he also said he was proof of it's effectiveness. See, he's a third-year elementary teacher at a struggling school in Northeast.
A few days ago, 206 ?ineffective? or twice-rated ?minimally effective? teachers were dismissed from their positions at the District of Columbia Public Schools thanks to the District's new teacher-evaluation system, IMPACT.
Twenty years ago I taught English in a small town located in southwest Poland called Gora. At the time the country was just beginning its political, economic, and social transition away from communism. I was in Warsaw the night Lech Walesa gave his acceptance speech in 1990 as Poland's first freely elected president since before World War II.
?Geography is not just about maps.''' * ?David P. Driscoll,? Chairman, National Assessment Governing Board
?The DOE's policies are actually fostering divison and conflict, largely between charter parents and traditional public school parents ."* ?Bill de Blasio, NYC Public Advocate
Mike isn't wrong when he notes with satisfaction that, on some indicators and at some grade levels, poor and minority students in the U.S. are doing better today than a decade a or so back. Only a churl would say that's not an accomplishment worthy of notice and some pride.
If the country's schools of education have been one of the more prominent bulls-eyes for school reformers, this new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, ?Student Teaching in the United States,? is bound to unnerve a few ed schools; 99 of them to be exact.?
Here's a new problem facing American education policy: Something we're doing seems to be working.
Dan Ariely has a provocative but mostly wrong-headed article in today's Washington Post roundtable on the Atlanta testing scandal.
It's been four years since the last book came out, but it feels good to be obses
?It's like pouring buckets into the sea. The only way to make change with private money is to dig a new canal, build dams, reshape the public school system.'' * ?Jay P. Greene, head of Department of Education Reform at University of Arkansas
New York City is closing down its ineffective and poorly designed merit pay system in light of a RAND report published yesterday.
Matthew Stewart, a stay-at-home dad in a wealthy New Jersey suburb, is leading a battle against the "boutique" charter schools that are being planned for his community.
?With these charter schools, people are trying to say, ?I want a custom-tailored education for my children, and I want you, as my neighbor, to pay for it.''' * ?Matthew Stewart, Parent
It's funny that Nicholas Kristof compares the education system to an escalator in his column in this weekend's New York Times. We know a great deal about broken escalators here in DC ? our subway system is full of them ?
What grade would Harry Potter have been more likely to receive if he'd attended American public schools, an ?A?