The question: Which cities are in the mix when it comes to being the ?Silicon Valley? of K-12 schooling? Or, more simply: If you're a problem-solver with some successes under your belt, where will you be most welcome? Cities rounding out the top ten include Charlotte, Austin, Houston, Fort Worth, and San Francisco.
The irreplaceable and immensely talented Laura Pohl is moving on, following her passion for international relief work. So we're looking to hire our next Director of New Media.
So reports Fritz Edelstein in his daily e-mail blast. (We're working on confirming this with the Department of Education.) If true, the timing is quite a surprise?at least a few weeks earlier than expected. Why is Arne Duncan rushing out this news in the dog days of August? To get a big splash during a slow news week? To connect with back-to-school stories?
It's back to school this week for many, and Michelle Rhee has a tough love message for principals.
Slowly, slowly, I work my way through the latest issue of Washington Monthly, in which America's colleges and universities are ranked.
Alex Johnston, the CEO of ConnCAN (I yearn for someone in Topeka to found KanCAN?or, better yet, someone in Montparnasse to start CancanCAN), writes that he is waiting for the coming of ?the
The Boston Globe reports that Beantown teachers are culturally insensitive, inclined to boorish behavior that, according to ?some students and advocates,?
School started last week for one of the highest performing middle schools in Columbus, the Columbus Collegiate Academy (one of Fordham's sponsored schools). With the start of school comes the start of familiar problems with student transportation.
?Damn near anything is going to be an improvement on the status quo.'' ? Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, commenting on the way teachers are evaluated
It's taken as an article of faith in the education reform community: we're screwing poor kids by giving them less effective teachers than their more affluent peers enjoy. The evidence seems pretty much open-and-shut. Poor schools are home to more rookie teachers, those with less subject-matter knowledge, lower certification exam scores, you name it.
?The success of a student can't just be one measurement. We need lots of different ways of looking at a kid.? ?Marcy Raymond, Metro School Principal
The Ohio Gadfly was ahead of the curve with its summer reading list.? And yesterday Liam told us what Diane Ravitch was reading.?
It's Friday, and I am telling you to stop fearing fun. You may be asking, ?do I even have a (school) choice??
The newest Washington Monthly just came?and it's the college rankings issue, with articles by Ben Miller (?College Dropout Factories?); Kevin Carey (?The Mayo Clinic of Higher Ed,? and ?America's Best Community Colleges?); and Erin Dillon (?America's Best Master's Universities and Baccalaureate Colleges?).
In this Sunday's Washington Post one?will find Diane Ravitch's selection of three books that ?have the power to change the national discussion of what now passes for ?school reform.'? And the winners are:
Paul Tough's op-ed in today's New York Times is called ?Don't Drop Out of School Innovation.? The innovation in question is the devotion of millions of dollars to construction, in cities across the land, of ?Promise Neighborhoods?
The columnist Dana Milbank's newspaper has allowed its pages to be used against him.
Don't miss Marci Kanstoroom's??Holding Students Accountable for Changing into their Gym Clothes? on the Ed Next blog this morning:
Paul Tough, a former staff editor at The New York Times Magazine, has a lengthy op-ed piece in today's Times titled ?Don't Drop Out of School Innovation,?
?Rather than stick with the same strategies and hope things somehow magically change, Congress should find more room in the budget to support the Obama administration's declared approach: to try new strategies and abandon failed ones; to expand and test programs with strong evidence of success, even if that evidence is inconclusive; and to learn from mista
So entreats the New Republic's Jonathan Chait in his new TRB column. Chait compares Obama's current struggle to straighten a sclerotic school system to?the president's?earlier exertion to even out an entangled medical establishment.
Yesterday, the ACT released its 2010 ?Condition of College and Career Readiness,? and the results are less-than-encouraging. According to the results, fewer than 1 in 4 students who took the exam is actually ready for college-level coursework.
I wasn't going to wade into the L A Times teacher brouhaha, but the responses to Liam Julian's Flypaper post yesterday have goaded me into the ring.
?You know who that chronically truant 6-year-old is going to be? The ?menace to society' that everyone will be knocking on our door about, asking me to prosecute.'' ? Kamala Harris, San Francisco district attorney and candidate for state attorney general
AFT's Randi Weingarten and Washington Teacher's Union's George Parker are close to a good old-fashioned school yard scuffle (it'll have to be after school though, because
Herewith, my final words on the L.A. dustup. Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute writes that he ?wanted to endorse?
Emerging from a two-and-a-half hour school board meeting the other night ? a short one! ? as I emerge from most of these sessions (drained), I was anxious to read Rick Hess's Ed Week post, ?School Boards as a Sympton, not the Cause,?
Albany Times Union education reporter Scott Waldman writes this morning
?Even if I get brought back this year, what's going to happen next year? It's really discouraging.'' ? Latravis Bernard, teacher from Miramar, Florida who was laid off last spring
