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Redesigning Teacher Pay: A System for the Next Generation of Educators

Susan Moore Johnson and John P. PapayEconomic Policy Institute2009

Law-abiding reform

Last week, you may have read about Rhode Island State Superintendent Deborah Gist’s move to abolish seniority bumping rights for teachers. But what you might not have seen was another move just as important: Raising cut scores for Rhode Island teacher candidates on the Praxis I exam.

Sweet dreams

Forget sleeping in class. Try sleeping on the way to class. At night! On a Sunday! Last weekend, sheriff’s deputies in St. Charles, Illinois, discovered a 5 year-old boy at his elementary school way past his bedtime. Seems the little guy had sleepwalked to school, managing to escape the house without waking his parents.

Matchmaking: Enabling Mandatory Public School Choice in New York and Boston

Thomas Toch and Chad AldemanEducation SectorSeptember 2009

Feds and ed revisted

I've written a couple times recently about the Department's lack of clarity about its view of the proper role for the feds in K-12 education.

Update on RTT docs

Per the below RTT minutiae, the Department offered more in its latest weekly update: The Department reviewed and responded to??comments from OMB on the final notices for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund and Race to the Top programs.

Today's Quotable and Notable

Quotable:

The best of both worlds

The Ohio Department of Education recently spotlighted an innovative partnership between Dayton Public Schools and Sinclair Community College that has established a unique

Teacher quality the most important (in-school) factor

Core Knowledge and Joanne Jacobs both picked up on a blog this week by Linda Perlstein, who says that Obama is “wrong” to suggest that teachers are the single most imp

Early college academies form lobby group

Ohio’s public early college academies are combining forces to lobby the Ohio General Assembly for more cash to keep their innovative high-school programs afloat.

Education secretary makes case for STEM education

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said Friday that the nation needs a national policy to boost science education, especially in promoting the best ways to teach science, engineering, and math.

Big jobs in the Big Easy

New Schools for New Orleans (here) is seeking a Chief Operating Officer and Director of Development to help grow the organization and work toward its goal of achieving excellent public schools for all students in New Orleans.

Performance gap persists between state math tests and nation's report card

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics scores released earlier this month received a somber reception here in Ohio and rightly so - student achievement in math has remained relatively flat in the eighth grade for the last decade. The NAEP is a biennial test administered to fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders by the U.S.

State Test Score Trends Through 2007-08: Are Achievement Gaps Closing and Is Achievement Rising for All?

Center on Education PolicyOctober 2009

EdNext video: Why school turnarounds don't work

If you enjoyed Andy Smarick's article on the fallacy of school turnarounds then you'll want to watch this Education Next video in which he and Mike Petrilli discuss the issue.

The Turnaround Fallacy

RTT minutiae

The Department's latest weekly update on the ARRA (released on 10/21) included the following: The Department submitted to OMB and internal clearance the notice of final priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria; the notice inviting applications; and the application for the $4.35 billion Race to the Top competitive grant program.

Remembering Ted Sizer

Theodore R. (Ted) Sizer, who passed away last week after a long and valiant battle with cancer, was a towering figure in American education-and a wonderful guy.

Today's Quotable and Notable

Quotable:

Teaser!

Tomorrow, Education Next is releasing my article that makes the case against the current turnaround craze. Stay tuned for more.

Holes in the "No Washington Meddling Doctrine"

Ten days ago, I wrote at length??here about the Department's shifting/uncertain position on federalism in education.

Arne Duncan and the E.D. Hirsch imperative

Whew, I just finished reading Secretary Duncan's??meaty address to the faculty and students at Teachers College at Columbia University.

National Association of Scholars praises Smarick's ARRA analysis

The National Association of Scholars has??posted an article that highlights the work Andy Smarick has done tracking the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, the economic stimulus).

Panic in Detroit?*

John Merrow of Learning Matters has an interview here with Robert Bobb, Detroit Public School's "Emergency Financial Manager," who was brought in to help right a school district with a $259 million deficit that's hemorrhaging students.

Charmed by Baltimore

New Haven teacher contract promising

The New Haven, Connecticut school district has not failed to disappoint lately in grabbing our attention and is back in the news again- This time for

Today's Quotable and Notable

Quotable: "The psychological impact of no longer being at the bottom has been powerful here. For so long, people believed Baltimore would always be last, no matter how hard they worked."

The dismal science's promise for education

Education research is slowly developing towards a cold hard science. So argues the latest edition of the Harvard Education Letter, which explores the role of economic research in education policy.

A wing and a prayer

It’s no broom-bedecked cover, but TIME coverage is still TIME coverage. In his recent article for that magazine, Gilbert Cruz reports that America's urban Catholic schools are facing a serious identity crisis--not to mention financial catastrophe.

When the money runs out

There’ll probably be more stories like this one: Chicago Public Schools is ending its version of Roland Fryer’s paying-students experiment. A number of cities, Chicago included, started pilot versions of programs that paid low-performing low-income students for good attendance, good behavior, and good grades.