Baltimore bests Boston
While cities like Boston and New York are jumping from the Teach For America ship crying poverty, Baltimore wants to double its number of passengers.
Ranking the States: Federal Education Stimulus Money and Prospects for Reform
Marguerite RozaCenter for Reinventing Public Education, University of WashingtonMay 2009
Investing in Charter Schools: A Guide for Donors
Christina HentgesBryan C. Hassel, Julie Kowal, and Sarah CrittendonThe Philanthropy RoundtableApril 2009
The Condition of Education 2009
Michael J. PetrilliNational Center for Education Statistics, Institute for Education SciencesJune 2009
The teacher workforce: Bigger vs. better
Chester E. Finn, Jr.All the gnashing of teeth and beating of breasts--and manifestos, studies, reports, and exhortations beyond enumeration--involving teacher recruitment, teacher quality, teacher compensation, and teacher retention miss the fundamental demographic reality at the core of almost all our teacher-related challenges: their sheer numbers.
Puffed up PD
Dying to learn how to make balloon animals? Tie-dye a tee-shirt? Cut out the perfect construction-paper snowflake? If you're a teacher in Massachusetts, you're in luck.
Chart(er)ing their own course
Should charter-school autonomy mean outsourcing services however a school sees fit? Ten schools in the San Diego area say aye. Heretofore, the charters in question were charged per pupil rates (a projected $763 next year) for district-provided special education services.
Leadership woes
"A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice," Sunny Jim once said (for those rusty on their modern European history, that's James Callaghan, PM of the UK in the late 70s.) Perhaps a lesson for Joel Klein, who's now taking heat from experts on his 14-month principal training boot camp, the Leadership Academy.
Staffing up
Here's some background info on some recent ED appointees. ????Russo weighs in, including a blog critique.
Ed-Op Round-Up: Debate about and commentary on teachers
If you read your hometown's newspaper regularly, you're bound to see an op-ed or editorial every so often on an educational topic. Today, your odds were much higher--many dailies featured guest opinion pieces on teachers from superintendents, mayors, and wonks, and a few regular columnists chimed in as well. Let's dig in for this first installment of the Ed-Op Round-Up.