I'm delighted to report that our debate was so powerful and compelling that the AEI staff, after reading our comments, arranged an event to dive deeper into these very matters! (Just kidding, though we shouldn't underestimate the far-reaching powers of this blog!)
We're not the only ones saying that anymore! So is Marguerite Roza, a bona fide researcher at the University of Washington.
Word came late last week that Chicago lawyer Charlie Rose (no, not that Charlie Ros
I can't even begin to explain the confusion, disappointment, and exasperation I feel about Achieve right now, the organization that's purportedly??all about pushing states to raise standards.
I think possibly the biggest mistake we've made in K-12 urban education is elevating the importance of a school's sector (traditional public, charter public, or private) above its academic quality. That is, rather than distinguishing schools based on how well they serve disadvantaged kids, our politics and policies distinguish them based on who operates them. Think of all of the ???????us vs.
If the state of Ohio were a charter school, it could see its public funding frozen and lose its authority to open new offices and agencies. According to the Columbus Dispatch:
Girl Scouts badges are so 20th century. Moms as troop leaders for teenagers? Also pass????. But educating young women and providing the public with yummy cookies? Well, those Do-Si-Dos and Samoas will never go out of fashion.
As reported by Steve Sawchuk at Education Week's Teacher Beat blog, Philadelphia superintendent Arlene Ackerman has moved to turn some of her lowest-performing schools into charters.
By my calculations, it's been more than three weeks since the Obama Administration announced a new appointment for the Department of Education.
This week's Education Gadfly should have you riveted: Checker and Mike respond to President Obama's address to the nation (in which he talked tough about everything...except education) and panelists at an event for the releas
And neither was the headline, but you can find??Checker's and my??National Review Online article about President Obama's education agenda here.
Hooray for Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, who has conditioned his (praiseworthy) support of D.C. voting rights in Congress on the extension of the city's federally-funded school voucher program.
I hope you enjoyed my live-blogging of the Common Core event on 21st Century Skills on Tuesday, but for a more coherent overview see this lucid post from Core Knowledge's Robert Pondiscio.
I've just finished reviewing the latest Brown report from Tom Loveless at Brookings for this week's Gadfly. And it's a good one.
(This is the first guest post to come from Andy Smarick, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education where he helped manage the Department's research, budget, and policy functions.
What has pork, cash cows, and ritual sacrifice? Why, the Omnibus Spending Bill of 2009, finally speeding through Congress. Yes, that's right, the plain ole budget for fiscal year 2009, which began, by the way, back on October 1, 2008.
President Obama's address to Congress is earning plaudits for its honesty, candor, and can-do/will-do/must-do spirit.
Once upon a time, little Susie was sent to the office for the errant spitball or wayward paper airplane landing in Ms. Beasley's coiffed beehive. Fast forward to 2009 and Susie--or in this case, a 14-year-old troublemaker from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin--has instead landed herself in the pen for a misuse-of-technology infraction. Her offense?
Geoffrey Goodman et al.Alliance for School Choice and Advocates for School ChoiceFebruary 2009
Districts and states across the land are all making changes to save some change. A few are even eyeing the long-sacred cow of small class sizes.
If you lead a charter school that's about to be closed for poor performance, how do you fight back? Well, you might misrepresent successful schools on the editorial page of your local newspaper. Sounds bizarre that but that's the tactic employed by Michael Mayo, executive director of Uphams Corner Charter in Massachusetts, whose charter has been revoked by the state.
In 2006, Fordham published a report with the playful name To Dream the Impossible Dream, which outlined several plausible paths to national academic standards. That dream seems less impossible today.
Chapter 5, "Bureaucracy Can't Teach"Philip HowardW.W. Norton & Co.January 2009
Tom LovelessThe Brookings InstitutionFebruary 2009
As reported by The Hoff at Education Week's NCLB Act II blog, earlier this week the nation's governors unanimously agreed to work toward common (i.e., national) standards. Were it not for our imploding economy this surely would have been front-page news.
Nancy Pelosi's troops are on quite a tear. First they went after Reading First, a program that by most accounts is doing wonders helping disadvantaged children gain basic literacy skills.
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland surprised most observers (including us) when he left the state's education voucher program intact in his biennial budget proposal. The Educational Choice Scholarship is available to up to 14,000 students assigned to chronically underperforming public schools.
