The House Finance and Appropriations Primary and Secondary Education subcommittee will wrap up public hearings this week on Gov. Strickland's education reform plan, despite disagreement about whether a Finance subcommittee is the appropriate group to consider massive changes to state education policy.
According to a new report, charter schools don't produce substantially different academic results than their district peers.
The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional AssistanceMarch 2009This report analyzes how state education agencies in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermon,t and the territory of Puerto Rico identify and support low-performing schools and districts under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
ED Senior Advisor Mike Smith voiced some contrarian views????on national or "common" standards yesterday.
Ohio's congressional delegation has been boasting about the infusion of money the Buckeye State's public schools would receive from the federal stimulus package.
Check out this story and interactive spread by Libby Quaid/Associated Press about teaching as a second career and alternate certification.
Amidst all of our adult arguments about the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, we seem to forget that there are 1,700 living, breathing children involved. Here's a reminder video from the Heritage Foundation:
On Saturday, the Washington Post's editorial page????again????wrote in favor of the threatened DC Opportunity Scholarship (voucher) Program.
This morning, NYT columnist David Brooks turns in an uneven????analysis????of President Obama's education speech. ????His opening hook (the president's anecdote about studying early in the morning with his mother) takes him off the rails a bit.
Many were caught off guard by this press release from the US Department of Education today. ????Jo Anderson, head of the Illinois Education Association (an NEA affiliate), was named "senior advisor" to Secretary Duncan. ????
It's short on details, but yesterday's White House press briefing transcript offers a tidbit about President Obama and the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program: Q: Robert, what does the President think about the D.C. scholarship program? The spending bill zeroes out and cuts the money for it.
Our friend Rick Hess also offered his thoughts (pasted below this entry) on the Obama education speech earlier this week. Rick wasn't entirely optimistic.
The schools chief in Baltimore unveiled a laudable????plan last night to close low-performing schools, expand high-performing schools, and continue opening new schools. Very exciting stuff.
I agree with Amber's post on the demise of the DC voucher plan. ????I'll add four quick things.
The Senate passed its $410 billion budget bill yesterday and rejected an amendment that would have restored funding for the DC voucher program (vote was 58-39). This means that the 1,700 students enrolled in the scholarship program will likely have to return to the failing schools they left. Sen.
I spent yesterday guest-lecturing at a reputable education school about the role of the federal government in education. These last-semester teaching candidates appeared bright and interested, yet I walked away feeling as if they knew far too little about the policy issues surrounding the profession they were about to enter.
President Obama delivered a major, long (over 4,500 words), and substantive speech on education this morning. Transcript here; coverage here
With Mike away on vacation, I get the keys to the vaunted Reform-o-Meter. Certainly President Obama's big speech today deserves to be taken for a spin.
In his first major education speech since taking office, President Obama made the case for charter schools as incubators of innovation and excellence in public education.
Just a quick sidenote about the speech this morning. Obama complained pretty emphatically about state standards and the current system--50 different sets of standards, from the lowest-of-the-low to the highest-of-the-high.
(Guest blogger Laura Bornfreund is a Fordham Fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute)
In his classic book, The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them,??E.D. Hirsch describes the education "thought-world," born from schools of education but dominant throughout the education system.
I'm heading out of town this evening for a spring break, but before I do I thought I'd check in and give our Reader Reform-o-Meter a check. As loyal Flypaper readers know, whenever we put someone or something through the Reform-o-Meter treatment, you get to voice your vote, too.
The Cincinnati Public Schools have been praised (including by yours truly) for embarking on top-to-bottom overhauls of the district's most persistently underperforming schools.
