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Hess to rock Cleveland
The American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick (Rick) Hess is coming (back) to the Buckeye State to set Ohioans straight.
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Charter School Autonomy: A Half-Broken Promise
Dana Brinson, Jacob RoschThomas B. Fordham Institute and Public ImpactApril 2010
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Educating children while living within our means
Educators across Ohio are consumed by two issues – cuts and levies. School districts face brutal budget decisions as they confront falling revenues.
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Education Transformation: Doing What Works in Education Reform
Center for American ProgressGlenda L. ParteeApril 2010This report, a product of the Center for American Progress’s Doing What Works project, takes a critical look at the implementation and funding of federal education policies and identifies programs that can be eliminated, consolidated, or restructured.
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New education model proposed for school-age offenders
Incarcerated young adults who are still legally eligible to a free public education would be able to attend classes inside prison walls, and continue coursework after release, if legislation currently under consideration is adopted.
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Two well-deserved pats on the back
Fordham’s Director of Charter School Sponsorship, Kathryn Mullen Upton, has been invited to join top practitioners and authorizing experts on the National Association of Charter School Authorizers’ national Advisory Panel that will recommend revisions to NACSA’s Principles & Standar
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Another state out of RTT
Today, Vermont announced that it will not compete in round two of the Race to the Top. It was one of ten states to not apply in the first round. State leaders said the program has distracted attention from its own reform initiatives.
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Quotable and notable
?As you add all this stuff on, you're going to have to add more people, mentors, librarians?How do we do that?? ?Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa ?Needs of ?Whole Child' May Factor in ESEA Renewal,? Education Week
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Send Obama back to Denver
Candidate Obama gave one heckuva speech in the Mile High City once upon a time; ask him to deliver another one as President Obama this coming June.
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Invaluable direction from Secretary Duncan
In a single sentence, Secretary Duncan has multiplied the chances of getting major reforms out of round two of the Race to the Top.
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Quotable and notable
?You want to keep a rookie who looks good relative to other rookies, even if it's not that great relative to all other teachers.? ? Douglas O. Staiger, Professor of Economics, Dartmouth College
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What goes up must come down
I've been receiving angry emails from teachers who heard my sound-bytes on NBC Nightly News and Today earlier this week. I said that ?our schools don't just need to go on a diet, they need to adapt a whole new way of life.
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Gadfly, gadfly!
You won't want to miss this week's edition of the Gadfly. On deck? Checker's take on ED's assessment competition, turnaround shenanigans in Iowa (HT to Eduwonk, btw), and a fascinating study that finds that great teachers typically make more money than so-so ones when they leave the classroom! The full shebang is below.
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Understanding the Common Core State Standards
Our event on Thursday (by the above name) went very well and was quite informative. Panelists Jason Zimba and David Coleman did a great job of digging into the proposed Common Core State Standards and answering questions that Checker (and later, the audience) posed to them.
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Re: Maybe there's no ?teacher quality gap? after all
Uber-reformer (and hedge fund manager) Whitney Tilson had this to say about my earlier post:
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Indiana out
Huge breaking news out of Indiana. Because of the state teacher union's unwillingness to negotiate on reform, Indiana will NOT apply in round two of RTT. ?Andy Smarick
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Education news nuggets
Will pretty bulletin boards be the death of education? Let's get some teachers trained like doctors to revive the patient.
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Gadfly wishes you a Happy Earth Day
As our loyal Gadfly readers know, we closed the Gadfly survey at midnight yesterday. Thank you?really?to everyone who took the time to speak up. All 667 of you. We really appreciate it and you should look forward to an AWESOME redesigned Gadfly coming soon.
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Mike Petrilli's all over NBC
Mike appeared in two similar news stories on NBC Nightly News last night and on the Today show this morning. Watch the clips below.
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Becoming charters could save Cleveland's most promising schools
The school board of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District voted this week to lay off 10 percent of its 8,000 employees, including 545 teachers.?? Particularly hard hit will be the district's ten ???innovation schools.????? Reported the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
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Re: Re: Maybe there's no 'teacher quality gap'? after all
Here's more (a lot more) from Whitney Tilson, continuing our ongoing debate about the Education Next forum on teacher equity.
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An Analysis of Academic Performance of Students Affected by Hurricane Katrina
Student Assessment Division, Department of Assessment, Accountability, and Data QualityTexas Education AgencyMarch/April 2010
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Avoid fruit salad
What will the Education Department’s current $350 million competition to develop new multi-state assessments actually yield? One new “national test”? Two? A bunch? Will they be any good?
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Do more effective teachers earn more outside of the classroom?
Matthew Chingos and Martin West Program on Education Policy and Governance, Harvard University March 2010
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Teacher re-recall
What do you do when you’ve got a surplus in one area, and a shortage in another? California’s got an answer. Forced to pink-slip 23,000 regular education teachers this year due to budget shortfalls, the state plans on retraining some of them to help ease the shortage in special education classrooms.