Commentary
Education News Nuggets
In case you missed it, Obama signed the Child Nutrition Bill into law on Monday?click here to see the ?before & after? school lunch menu.?
Topics
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Boo-Hoo Boehner: Future Speaker Overcome by the American Dream
I am still recovering from last Sunday's 60 Minutes tear-jerker.
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Ready, Aim, Fire: California's Parent Trigger
This may or may not be the answer to eternally bad schools, but a little parent revolution surely can't be any worse than any of the other attempts at getting poor kids a good educati
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Quotable & Notable
?I think we have schizophrenia in the U.S. that we believe all U.S. schools are lousy except the schools we send our kids to.? * Larry Cuban, Professor Emeritus of Education at Stanford University
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Quotable & Notable
?Until we start seeing assessments that ask kids to write research papers, ask them to solve unfamiliar problems, ask them to defend their ideas, ask them to engage with both fiction and nonfiction texts; until those kinds of assessments are our state assessments, all we're measuring are basic skills.'' *
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Reflecting on 2010
In my other life (as a Hoover Institution fellow and chairman of the Koret Task Force on K-12 education), I've lately?had the pleasure of joining Bill Evers and other task force members in distilling the most important education events of the past year and sorting them into ?best? and ?worst? columns.
Report
Accountability & Testing
Are Bad Schools Immortal?
This study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute finds that low-performing public schools—both charter and traditional district schools—are stubbornly resistant to significant change. After identifying more than 2,000 low-performing charter and district schools across ten states, analyst David Stuit tracked them from 2003-04 through 2008-09 to determine how many were turned around, shut down, or remained low-performing. Results were generally dismal. Seventy-two percent of the original low-performing charters remained in operation—and remained low-performing-five years later. So did 80 percent of district schools. Read on to learn more.
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Tough time for tenure
The Wall Street Journal reports today that a higher percentage than usual of New York City teachers will not receive tenure this year ?as the city moves to make more difficult the path to lifetime employment.?
Commentary
Education News Nuggets
There seems to be quite a blame game going on in education these days: see here and here.
Commentary
Get Smart: New York's New Number Two
This morning's Times has a nice profile of Shael Polakow-Suransky, New York City School's new #2 (defined, oddly enough,?as ?the educational counterpart to Cathleen?P. Black, the businesswoman chancellor?). ? Among the highlights,
Commentary
NEW REPORT: Are Bad Schools Immortal?
This new study, Are Bad Schools Immortal? The Scarcity of Turnarounds and Shutdowns in Both Charter and District Sectors from the Thomas B.
Commentary
The marriage gap
At Commentary's blog, Contentions, Peter Wehner directs readers to a new study (from the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values) that is, according to Wehner, ?both somewhat encouraging and quite ala
Commentary
Ask the kids
?Kids know effective teaching when they experience it.? So says Harvard's Ronald Ferguson, a researcher who designed questionnaires that were given to thousands of students across the nation and which asked those students to evaluate their teachers.
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Education news nuggets
Low on cash for the holidays? You can always save by eating cheese sandwiches.
Commentary
You can blame the youth
Americans may overwhelmingly believe that education is vitally important to the nation's economic success. But that doesn't mean they're willing to keep footing the bill for it.
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Quotable & Notable
?Attracting good talent is a challenge in the best of circumstances. And this is not the best of circumstances.'' [In reference to Atlanta schools] * Mike Casserly, Executive Director of the Council of the Great City Schools
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Last call?
I recently finished reading Frederick M. Hess's new-ish book, The Same Thing Over and Over, and found myself envisioning education policy as a bar full of drunks.
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Already making waves in Florida
Florida's governor-elect, Rick Scott, was in my hometown on Thursday, speaking to a crowd at an evangelical church, when, according to St. Petersburg Times reporter Ron Matus, he said this:
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Education News Nuggets
For those of you anxious to hear the decision on whether NYC's Department of Education will be required to release teacher performance data, kee
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Absurdly inappropriate behavior can't be only reason for teacher dismissal
This week the Cleveland Plain Dealer announced that the district and teachers union will begin working on a new teacher evaluation that will include ?evidence of student learning.?
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Atlanta burning? At least, hoping that tomorrow is another day
Last summer it was the cheating scandal that ?haunts? Atlanta's schools chief, as reports of widespread efforts by teachers to change test scores mounted.
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Quotable and notable
?Things we've intuitively known, or thought about, or wished for about teacher effectiveness?there's some empirical evidence that they are valid.? Vicki Phillips, Director of Education Programs, Gates Foundation
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Quotable and notable
???Things we've intuitively known, or thought about, or wished for about teacher effectiveness???there's some empirical evidence that they are valid.??? Vicki Phillips, Director of Education Programs, Gates Foundation
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In which I debate Diane Ravitch in 140 characters or less
Perhaps you've noticed, but I haven't been blogging as much as usual lately. That's because I've started tweeting, by which I mean I've started wasting untold hours following thousands of mini-messages on Twitter every day, along with sending dozens of my own.
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Education News Nuggets
The Modern Language Association has a new report out?and it looks like interest in
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Stop the presses! Bloomberg wanted Canada?
Do we care? The New York Times is reporting that Mayor Mike asked Harlem education guru Geoffrey Canada to be his Chancellor?before he picked publishing executive Cathie Black.
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Grading Gotham Teachers ? Two More
It wouldn't be New York if it weren't a bit of a media slugfest.?
Commentary
Grading Gotham's Teachers ? No Ruling Yet
In a case the NY Times said would ?propel New York City to the center of a national debate about how student test scores should be used to evaluate teachers,?