Releasing bad news on a Friday afternoon is a time-honored tradition among governments of all political leanings. (The public is distracted by weekend plans; few people read the Saturday paper.) The Obama Administration is showing itself to be no different; it's no coincidence that the latest (very positive) findings about the D.C.
The third-year evaluation on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program reports that students who received vouchers outperformed their non-voucher peers in reading. There was no difference in math.
This time I'm not making an April Fool's Day joke. If you give Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's new??letter about the Title I regs* a good look, you'll notice a subtle linguistic shift:
Confirming Mike's post from last night, Kerri Briggs is the new state chief for Washington, DC.
It's been rumored before, but I'm hearing that it's a done deal: John Easton,
Watch out Massachusetts; your little neighbor to the south is poised to become the next big school reform powerhouse.
This morning, the Department of Education posted all the information you could ever want about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (phew). But we're still interested in exploring budget cuts and whether they can catalyze education reform. Are you?
We got a bit ahead of schedule this week so we thought we'd publish a day early. You know what they say about that early worm... or early bird? Whatever.
Two Ohio lawmakers on opposite sides of the political aisle say it is critical for the state to address a looming pension crisis among teachers and other public-sector employees."There have been rumblings about pensions for some time. We've seen bloated pension benefits take down companies like GM," said Rep. Seth Morgan (R-Huber Heights).
National Center for Education StatisticsMarch 2009
Much has been much written about the challenges of understanding Gov. Strickland's school-funding plan. For example, the Akron Beacon Journal asked, why some "wealthy districts receive more state money than much poorer ones?
Very encouraging article out of Newark, NJ about the growth of high-quality charters in that city and other urban areas in the state.
Fred Hiatt pens a very good piece in today's Post about Bill Gates' priorities for K-12 education reform and how these align with the positions of the president, secretary of education, and DC schools chancellor.
When I talk to friends or suburban audiences about urban education, the conversation nearly always turns to the role of parents. ????The consensus is that disinterested, disengaged parents are to blame for the discouraging results of inner-city public schools. ????From this, they typically infer that these schools will never turn around until parents shape up.
During my time at the Alliance, I got to know and greatly respect the work of ConnCAN, a nonprofit education research and advocacy organization in Connecticut.
Lynne Munson of Common Core offers the inside scoop on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills's pep rally held at the NEA yesterday.
The NYT reports on a new study finding that if a school is within a block of a fast-food restaurant, its students are more likely to be obese. ????I've been fascinated by obesity studies since I read that 100 years ago the wealthiest quartile in America was the heaviest but today the poorest quartile is.
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...is here.??First up, take a closer look at our new voucher and accountability paper.
As we write, the fate of the District of Columbia voucher initiative (a.k.a. Opportunity Scholarship Program) hangs in the balance. Ambiguous, ambivalent remarks from President Obama's camp and Secretary Duncan certainly haven't helped to secure its future and its Congressional and interest-group enemies seem bent on ending it--with a possible reprieve for current beneficiaries.
If it's sensational, it'll sell papers. That's the motto of most periodicals and the tack the New York Post was surely taking with this subhead: "Teachers watched porn on work computers, falsified records to pad their pockets, faked doctors' notes to go on vacation." The New York Department of Education received 2,886 misconduct accusations last year--the most ever.
The Washington Post's Jay Mathews is ready to close the book on vouchers. While he supports them himself, he thinks "[t]his nation of public school backers just won't go for vouchers." But hold the eulogizing for just a sec. Simply because D.C.'s program is on the block doesn't mean there's not hope beyond the Beltway.
When the federal government starts talking in billions, is it too much to ask that the money be well spent? Apparently so. In the rush to get funds out to states and districts ASAP, education stimulus dollars are being dispersed via a tangle of federal formulae.
Michael Gurian, Kathy Stevens, and Peggy DanielsJossey-Bass Publishing2009
John D. Bransford, Deborah J. Stipek, Nancy J. Vye, Louis M. Gomez, and Diana Lam, eds.Harvard Education PressFebruary 2009
Ron Zimmer, Brian Gill, Kevin Booker, Stephane Lavertu, Tim Sass, and John WitteRAND EducationMarch 2009
Conventional wisdom says that most states and school districts will make budget cuts in the most boneheaded manner possible: lay off their young teachers, eliminate art and music classes, decimate sports programs, and so forth. And evidence from the current recession indicates that this conventional wisdom is usually right.
