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American nerds in pictures
We assiduously avoided putting a nerdy kid on the cover of our high-achieving students report.
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The devil's in Deval's details
Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts unveiled his education reform plan yesterday--sorta.
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Schoolchildren
Re Amber's fine post: The mayor of Gloucester, Massachusetts, announced that no evidence exists to support the claim that a group of young girls agreed to get pregnant and raise their babies together (althoug
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On Faust and faith-based charter schools
Charles C. Haynes of the First Amendment Center turns in a strong counter-argument explaining why religious charter schools are a "Faustian bargain" that aren't "worth the spiritual costs":
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A teacher responds
Regarding my review of Hard Times at Douglass High, a teacher (Mr. McDermott) who was featured in the documentary leaves a comment on Flypaper:
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Practical consequences
Talk radio is always interesting--it can be hard to get a word in edgewise! But the callers can sometimes bring clarity.
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Hard Times at Douglass High
About the short review that Coby kindly mentions: I wrote it for a lay audience, one not tuned in to every shift in k-12 minutiae, and so I didn't dive into the issues as much as perhaps I could have.
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Metaphorically speaking
A??reader (a teacher, it seems) writes??to the St. Petersburg Times: Did Jeb Bush really say "our education system is an eight-track system living in an iPod world"?
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It's Thatcher's fault
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is going to today??blame Margaret Thatcher for Britain's education woes, the Telegraph reports.
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The meaning of "excellence"
Our friend Greg Forster wrote a post last week about Checker's and my National Review Online essay in which we report on
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Of backpacks and diaper bags
The story of the 18 pregnant girls who made a pact to become pregnant at Gloucester High School in Gloucester, Massachusetts, has been all over the news in the last several days. Everyone hearing the story has been understandably dismayed.
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Indicator overload?
A group of charter school organizations including the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, issued a report t
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The Wire it's not
Over at National Review Online, Liam reviews the HBO documentary Hard Times at Douglass High, which chronicles the plight of a failing Baltimore high school.
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Smoke and mirrors?
Mayor Bloomberg will announce today that test scores are way up in New York City. But no one, it seems, thinks the gains are legitimate.
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If at first you don't succeed...
I hope the College Board catches the flack??it deserves for its decision??to (starting in 2010)??show colleges only the SAT scores that the??students who earn them choose to reveal--i.e., if Johnny takes the test 10 times, Johnny gets to show State U.
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Alternative alternative certification
Mike and Checker, who were at the Excellence in Education summit in Orlando yesterday, may have more to say about this.
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Rhee vs. the status quo
On Wednesday's NewsHour, John Merrow resumed his series on Michelle Rhee's efforts to revamp the D.C. Public Schools. This installment centers around Hart Middle School, a chronically-failing institution that landed on Rhee's radar as a candidate for dramatic restructuring.
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Where did those millions go?
Florida school districts have been recently complaining about state budget cuts in education. Financial management of this sort doesn't really bolster their case, though.
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Donald Duck and dropout rates
Speaking of Florida, former Governor Jeb Bush is convening at Disney World today his Excellence in Action education summit.
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Unions aren't so hot, any way you homeslice it
If I were an anonymous blogger and had to pick a clever moniker with which to sign my pithiest posts, I might actually opt for something similar to that decided upon by this person, who goes by "Dr. Homeslice." I'm edgy and educated, it bespeaks.
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Good news for alternate routes to certification
I got distracted yesterday by the release of our high-achieving students study, but Tuesday's news out of California is still worth celebrating. A federal judge ruled that the U.S.
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"Outrageous"
That's how Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings just described* the decision by the House Appropriations Committee to defund the Reading First program. And she's right. * Here at the Excellence in Education summit in Orlando.
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