It's amazing how thoroughly the subject of money has taken over America's education conversation in recent months. By comparison, you don't hear that much about NCLB problems and reauthorization challenges anymore, or about curriculum, test scores, even teaching and teachers, except for how many may lose their jobs.
As if principals don't have enough land mines to avoid already, now they have to be delicate about decibels. San Antonio Police issued Olympia Elementary principal Terri LeBleu a ticket last week after a neighbor complained about the racket coming from her school during Family Fitness Day.
Unless something unexpected happens during the Senate confirmation process, John Easton, who was just nominated by the White House, should be taking over as Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in a matter of weeks.
This was "education week" at the Supreme Court, with the justices hearing cases about student privacy and state obligations to fund programs for English language learners. While the former received most of the attention (it involved the strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl, after all), the latter could have greater implications for education policy.
Picking up on Andy's perspicacious observation last week, consider this quote:
It's well-documented that school funding, generally speaking, is too opaque.
Students who attend a private school through Ohio's EdChoice Scholarship Program still take the state's achievement tests each spring. The results are reported to the state education department, but nothing much else is done with the data. The results aren't reported publicly.
In honor of Earth Day, we'd like to offer up and oldie but a goodie: last year's Fordham Earth Day video. Enjoy!
At least that's how it appears to me. Almost everyone else has moved onto the stimulus and the economy, but not SCOTUS. See this report from Ed Week blogger Mark Walsh??on yesterday's hearing in Flores v. Horne.
Our president, Chester Finn Jr., and our distinguished visiting fellow Andy Smarick have penned a very nice piece in the Washington Post today about the crisis in urban Catholic schools and the need for the Obama administration to step up and help ???
It had been a while since I glanced at our reader polls for recent Reform-o-Meter ratings, so I just took a look.
A friend just forwarded me this excellent blog, "Serenity Though Haiku." The site has an admittedly particular political bent ("surviving the Obama years," if you were curious), but it straddles all political lines with this fabulous succinct pronouncement on the D
The massacre at Columbine High School happened ten years ago, on April 20, 1999. Hard to believe it has been that long.
Let's break it down: Good news: "NGA, CCSSO Launch Common Standards Drive" Great news: Oklahoma House votes unanimously to approve ABCTE
Jay Greene had a lot of smart things to say in this Wall Street Journal op-ed, but I found his opening paragraph unpersuasive:
Over at the Charter Blog, Nelson Smith provides some very interesting color????to the "A System of Schools" report I touched upon<
It's packed this week and quite a read. First up, discover Checker's thoughts on Obama as First Role Model. We know he's commander-in-chief, world leader, international negotiator... but what about First Parent?
Here's some late-in-the-day education news...Apparently, $4 billion in stimulus dollars has been cleared for California. The AP reports.
I've gotten some push-back from some friends about this post from yesterday; they think I went too soft on the newest members of the Obama Administration. (If you click on "view results" under our poll, however, you'll see that Flypaper readers are all over the map on the issue.)
Flypaper readers know we've been all over the saga of the District of Columbia's federally-funded "Opportunity Scholarship Program" in recent weeks, but I've yet to give the latest twists the proper Reform-o-Meter treatment.
Back in April 1995, the New York City Partnership, an organization of NYC-based business leaders, released a report on overhauling Gotham's public education system. ????Titled "A System of Schools," the report has held up remarkably well over time, bordering on prescient in places.
Jay P. Greene had??an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.??He talks about the problems that charter schools are facing in New York:
Adults, beware this age-old problem: the childhood tendency to take your words literally. That's what's happened to one poor bloke in Palm Harbor, Florida. After a particularly nasty losing streak, the coach of a high school baseball team told his players they were "snake-bitten" and needed to turn themselves around.
While the 2004 moratorium on new Rhode Island charters expired last June, it's taken months longer for state dollars to catch up. The Ocean State currently has a paltry 11 charters serving 3,100 students--and the waiting list to get in is almost as long.
Barack and Michele Obama seem to be exemplary parents. They're sending their daughters to a fine D.C. private school (while withdrawing similar options from hundreds of low-income Washingtonians). They left the girls home where they belonged--with Grandma and teachers--instead of carting them off to Europe.
No child likes to be sent to the principal's office. Some students in Tucson, Arizona must be thanking their lucky stars. As the district contemplates an 18 percent budget cut, it seems some schools may cut their vice principals, share principals, or even abolish the school-leader position altogether.
Marcus WintersSCDP Milwaukee EvaluationMarch 2009
