I don't mind a few bee stings
Bees really dislike having their hive disturbed and that's obviously true of universal-pre-school advocates, too.
Bees really dislike having their hive disturbed and that's obviously true of universal-pre-school advocates, too.
As you may recall, last week brought news that??math scores were up across the great state of New York.??
Many people know that then-AFT head Albert Shanker gave a speech at the National Press Club in 1988 floating the idea of what eventually became known as charter schooling. But what was the response of the Reagan administration to this new idea? The following quote comes from the New York Times (April 1, 1988):
Those of us in the education world are used to thinking about "competitive effects" thusly: The public education system will do nothing to reform itself unless forced to do so. So we try to force it to do so by threatening to take away students, dollars, and union members by offering parents options outside of the system (via vouchers, charter schools, etc.).
Ohio is in the midst of a heated debate about the future of school funding.
We're fifteen minutes into Fordham's big debate on universal preschool, designed to discuss Checker Finn's latest book,??R
Steve Barnett, the co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research, ceded no ground to Checker. He came out of his corner swinging and never stopped. The book is "inaccurate and poorly reasoned," "cherry picks" the evidence, and is full of "errors and exaggerations."
Neal McLuskey from CATO is up and he mostly agrees with Checker. (This is more surprising than you might think. We don't generally agree on much.) But he has two additional points: 1. Over time, programs like Head Start get captured by the people who are employed by them.
Sara Mead of the New America Foundation is taking her turn. She started by holding up Checker's book and commenting (correctly) how similar its cover looks to that of her favorite children's book, The Little Engine that Could. (Still, trust me, don't show Checker's book cover to a small child.
That's what Steve Barnett charged. He thinks Checker is arguing to "hold back" the middle class so that poor kids can catch up and close the achievement gap. Needless to say, Checker doesn't agree with that characterization, but admits that he agrees with (not-so-far-left) liberal Bruce Fuller, who believes in targeting resources on poor kids rather than spreading them around.
Testifying before Congress, Secretary Duncan came under fire from a few Dems for upping the Teacher Incentive Fund and slightly reducing Title I in the 2010 budget.
Potentially interesting charter school hearing on the Hill today. Mayoral control of schools coming to Detroit?
Mad love for charteralliance and edreform for twittering during today's congressional hearing on chartering.
The New Teacher ProjectJune 2009
C. Kirabo JacksonJournal of Labor EconomicsApril 2009
In last week's Recommended Reading "Leadership woes," Gadfly erroneously cited investigative reporting done by The New York Times as research from an as-yet-unreleased New York University study on New York City principals. The NYU study will be available later in June.
The original voucher pioneer, Milwaukee, is now pioneering voucher regulation.
With all the positive press surrounding high-achieving charter schools, it's not surprising that they've turned into the education reformer's go-to point of comparison.
This week's news that 46 states plus the District of Columbia have signed up to pursue common education standards is a big deal but it's also potentially a big nothing. If this effort leads to rigorous national standards and tests in reading and math, historians will view this milestone as historically significant. But nobody has yet committed to anything of the sort.
Turning around bad schools is harder than turning around Chrysler, GM, or AIG--but our fearless, tireless, irrepressible new federal administration seems bent on doing this, too. Just listen to Education Secretary Arne Duncan on the topic of closing and "reconstituting" failed schools.
Politicians often get themselves into hot water for "flip-flopping" on an issue. Jefferson Township High School students learned this lesson the hard way--and literally. These Ohio high schoolers, days away from year's end, planned a daring defiance of authority: they would stand up to their school's no-flip flop rule by all wearing flip flops on the very same day!
Policymakers, what do you do when your state's newly adopted high school exit exams might result in a precipitous drop in graduation rates? Give failure a pass. Yes, that's right; if you're a Minnesota high school student, you have two options when it comes to the allegedly "extraordinarily challenging" eleventh grade math exit exam: pass once or fail three times.
Loyal Flypaper reader (and American Institutes of Research VP) Mark Schneider has suggested a great new contest idea: Name the education sector's best aptonym!