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Gargantuan education grants
An email about Gates' latest gargantuan investment in education appeared in my inbox today. I've now picked my jaw up off of the floor and thought I'd pass it along:
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Interesting stuff
More reason to be excited about Baltimore (despite this) Florida to ask for $1 billion in RTT funds???
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Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: "The civil right is to an excellent education. It's not about having an art room." -Miriam Lewis Raccah, founder and executive director of Girls Prep Charter School
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Unrest about a national test
If statewide content standards are political sausage, and voluntary national standards are political foot-longs, then national tests are probably a political 250-foot “Monterrey monster dog.” As we and others have pointed out, standards are only as good
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Dusk
I, too, will be celebrating and giving thanks for America next week. The backward look is pretty darn impressive. But I worry when I look ahead.
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Blinded by the (green) light
The education bill that made it through the Massachusetts state senate, replete with a whopping 95 amendments, late Tuesday is being lauded as the biggest reform bill since
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Bookish homecoming
In a story that would make Detective Bookman proud, Arizona’s Camelback High School received a package this month containing two half-century-overdue library books. Though neither was by Seinfeld’s favorite Henry Miller, the school was glad if a bit baffled to retrieve its aged copie
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Short-Run Effects of Parental Job Loss on Children
Ann Huff Stevens and Jessamyn SchallerNational Bureau of Economic ResearchNovember 2009
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Just jealous
“Why you should hate this school.” That’s the sub-head for an article in September’s Washingtonian on what some say is America’s best high school: Thomas Jefferson in Northern Virginia.
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Considering merit in the Middle East
Rewarding teachers based on their skill and performance may be a contentious issue in the United States, but in Afghanistan it’s seen as a recruiting tool.
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Are High Quality Schools Enough to Close the Achievement Gap? Evidence from a Social Experiment in Harlem
Will Dobbie and Roland G. Fryer, JrNational Bureau of Economic ResearchNovember 2009
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Duncan's Maryland mistake
Late last week, Secretary Duncan (and his able team) acted on what I have every reason to believe were noble intentions. Unfortunately, the secretary missed a golden opportunity and possibly did more harm than good for reform in my beloved Maryland.
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Racing to the Top in a time of fiscal peril
I've just finished reading the Race to the Top program executive summary released by the U.S.
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Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: "There is no way in the world [New Jersey Governor Elect Chris Christie] can do all of that. The money is not there to pay the bills...Before it's all over, he's going to wish he had asked for a recount." - Shirley K. Turner, Democratic chair of the New Jersey Senate education committee
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Mathews on closing schools
Interesting new column here by Jay Mathews. In it, he writes that??striving to turn around chronically low-achieving schools is "a noble quest I have long supported. But I have come to wonder if it might be a big waste of time and money. Most efforts to save such places have been failures.
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Putting money where our education is
One of the main criticisms of individual-teacher merit pay is that it will undermine teacher collaboration. This same argument is also leveled at teachers who choose to sell their lesson plans online.
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Teaching English in Chile
Guest blogger Katie Wilczak is a former Fordham intern.?? She is now teaching teaching English at a rural municipal high school in Chile through a program launched in 2003 by the Chilean Ministry of Education and the United Nations Development Programme called English Opens Doors .
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Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: "M&M sorting is not a new concept...I made it easier for teachers to do. They just have to click and print." -Erica Bohrer, a Long Island elementary school teacher who sells lesson plans online
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Carey embraces government waste, featherbedding, swelling debt
At "The Quick and the Ed,"??Kevin Carey??has offered an intriguing if somewhat??peculiar response to my and Rick Hess's piece in the Education Gadfly and the
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Today's Quotable and Notable
Quotable: "This is not about getting in the game, this is about winning. There will be a lot more losers than winners." -Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, on Race to the Top awards
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Union jobs or education reforms?
The Department of Education reported the other day that, of the $97.4 billion in economic-stimulus funding that Congress steered its way, 69 percent was “obligated” by September 30th. (The balance--including Secretary Arne Duncan’s much-discussed “Race to the Top” money--must get out the door by September 2010.)
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Teacher cover-up?
Based on the reaction of the Maine Department of Education and the Maine Education Association, you’d think recent state legislation that loosens teacher confidentiality laws was going to unleash Enron II.
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Witness protection
Iowa is also dealing with confidentiality issues--for the accusers of teachers. For the last nine years, the state attorney general’s office has been violating a law that protects investigatory documents by sharing filed complaints (for fraud, sexual misconduct, gross incompetence, and abuse) with teachers, including the identity of the complainant.
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Follow the leader
At least four states have halted, and three others have slowed, their standards-revision processes in anticipation of the Common Core version.
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Predictable "poverty"
What’s something that’s happened nearly every year for the last 100? (No, we’re not talking about the dashed hopes of Chicago Cubs’ fans.) School budgets have grown.
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Race to the Top: Stepping away from reform?
They say you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. That just about sums up the difference between the Race to the Top’s “proposed priorities” and the final versions released today.
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??Qu?? Pasa? Are ELL Students Remaining in English Learning Classes Too Long?
Edward Flores, Gary Painter, and Harry PachonTomás Rivera Policy Institute, University of Southern CaliforniaNovember 2009
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Everyone Wins: How Charter Schools Benefit All New York Public School Students
Marcus A. WintersManhattan Institute for Policy ResearchOctober 2009
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Charter-challenged
According to the Superintendent of Denver, Tom Boasberg, "Charter schools are public schools, and they must be public schools in every sense of the word." That's why he wants Denver's charters to accept all students within their geographic boundaries. The idea isn't really new, surprising, or troublesome; most charters must take all students who apply and some even abide by boundary rules.