The issue of parental involvement is vexing for education reformers. Everybody knows that it matters, but nobody really knows how to encourage it. In a free society, how do schools, or governments, make sure that parents provide the love, attention, discipline, nurturing, and care that their kids need to succeed? The short answer is: they can’t.
I've been musing for days (here and here) about who should be the next Secretary of Educatio
Today we live in a different country than we did even 10 days ago. Back then we were partaken with partisanship and infected with invectiveness. Now we watch with awe as the sitting president and the president-elect prepare for yet another peaceful, democratic transition of power.
Releasing bad news on a Friday afternoon is a time-honored tradition among governments of all political leanings. (The public is distracted by weekend plans; few people read the Saturday paper.) The Obama Administration is showing itself to be no different; it's no coincidence that the latest (very positive) findings about the D.C.
"I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona, today (projected high: 99 degrees) for an education reform summit hosted by the State Policy Network, the Alliance for School Choice, and the Friedman Foundation.
There's plenty to like about [Jonathan] Alter's piece; I love the quote by House education committee chairman George Miller that "the debate is between incrementalists and disrupters, and I'm with the disrupters." (Alter must have sat in on an editorial board meeting with his Post colleagues because they used that terminology too.) But Mr.
I attended an advisory panel meeting today for a study looking at how to retain talented Gen Y teachers in the classroom. I was rather skeptical from the beginning, as I doubt that it's possible to keep talented young people in any job for more than a few years.
For months, pundits of all persuasions have debated whether or not President Obama will turn out to be a bona fide education reformer. But now, the wait is over!
Last week I made the fairly obvious argument that GOP governors are the key to the Republican Party's renewal, including on the education issue.
"I suppose we'd been warned, weeks ago, that the New York City Department of Education was watching us.
As first reported by Politics K-12 yesterday, Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond has decided to return to Palo Alto rather than seek a top position in the Obama Administration.
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.
A new analysis of U.S. performance on the international PISA exam in mathematics shows significant declines for students at the top and middle of the achievement distribution from 2003 to 2006.* This is the strongest evidence to date that the performance of America’s highest-achieving students dropped during the early years of No Child Left Behind’s implementation.
From the Washington Post: "In his quest to transform American education, President Obama appeared yesterday to put his faith in pledges from some of the interest groups that helped scuttle reform in years past, but the industry's promises fell well short of the White House's expansive claims."...Oh wait, just kidding...Read it
There's a lot of buzz in the policy community right now around scaling up high-performing charter schools and turning around low-performing public schools.
In the brouhaha over last week’s UCLA Civil Rights Project report on charter school “segregation,” one talking point seems unimpeachab
"This over-the-top, the sky-is-falling article from the Boston Globe is yet more evidence that the concept of 'standards' has taken a beating in public discourse. At issue is the MATCH public charter school, one of the nation's best, according to Newsweek...." Read it here.
"You know, it's tough to ask a teacher who's making $30,000 or $35,000 a year to tighten her belt when people who are making much more than her (sic) are living pretty high on the hog." --Senator Barack Obama, October 7th presidential debate.
There's a lot of talk about bipartisanship right now, what with the stimulus bill making its way through Congress and President Obama obviously yearning for Republican support.
The No Child Left Behind hard-liners are striking back at President Obama’s call to move beyond the goal of getting 100 percent of American students to “proficiency” by 2014, and working instead to get most students “college and career-ready” by the time they graduate. Sandy Kress
Earlier this month, the Institute of Education Sciences released a major charter school study…But an important caveat…got mostly overlooked: charters serving lots of poor or low-performing kids made a significant positive impact on math achievement, while “middle class” charter schools had a negative
It's hard not to root for Michelle Rhee, the butt-kicking, straight-talking, no-nonsense Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
In the debate Friday night, Barack Obama responded to John McCain's idea of freezing federal spending by arguing that "the problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel." Then, on Face th
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.
As a few smart guys predicted fifteen months ago, the budget crisis is putting serious pressure on teacher seniority as a
"Sol Stern offers a wise suggestion in this City Journal Online piece: create an independent agency in New York to verify student achievement results...." Read it here.
"Now that Sol Stern has completely ruffled the feathers of the 'whatever works' crowd, he's turned his sights to one of the most visible leaders of the 'what works' movement, Institute for Educational Sciences director Russ Whitehurst...." Read it here.
President Obama has selected federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court. Education Week's School Law blog has a nice quick summary of her background.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did the country a big favor yesterday by announcing his intention to freeze the salaries of all of his teachers and administrators–and in one fell swoop eliminate the need to lay off any instructors.
