Mike and Rick discuss the relationship between K-12 diversity and quality, swapping the ACT for state high school graduation tests, and Schwarzegger's flexibility on class size reduction funds. Then Amber gives us some bad news on state teacher staffing plans and Rate that Reform audits Office Depot.
Is there more to school reform than student achievement? Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso would say no.
On Wednesday, July 11th, from 2 to 3 p.m., join Education Week for an online conversation about principals and The Autonomy Gap. A few days before the chat, you can go here to submit your questions. Should be a lively discussion!
This week, Mike and guest co-host, education advocate Dave Deschryver, chat about why management matters, why Checker Finn is not the only conservative in Washington, and why we'll have two more years to criticize NCLB. Education News of the Weird is out of the office and will have inconsistent email access.
This week, Mike and guest co-host Coby Loup of the Fordham Foundation talk about Catholic schools, prison schools, and fat schools. Jeff Kuhner is outraged by bus drivers who can't hold it, and Education News of the Weird is, too. Click here to listen through our website and peruse past editions.
GreatSchools, a Bay Area non-profit that works to encourage parental involvement, is seeking a new COO. (You may have heard of their stellar website, GreatSchools.org.) This individual would report directly to the CEO and founder, and oversee organizational strategy, development of new projects, and recruitment of high-quality staff to the GreatSchools family.
This week, we welcome guest co-host Andy Smarick to the show. He and Mike discuss test scores in New York, preliminary results of Roland Fryer's Sparks program, and giving out a diploma seventy-three years late.
Such an opportunity only comes around once in a while: To work for AEI’s Rick Hess. He’s hiring a new Research Assistant and he’s looking for you.
"I just got back from Joel Klein's address at the American Enterprise Institute (carried live on C-SPAN).
Here’s a general rule: when you see sentences like the one above, know to be very, very skeptical.
Two years ago I complained about the "apple ballot" that the Montgomery County Education Association distributed with its election-time endorsements.
It's been awhile since I outright fawned over President Obama, so I'm going to let this one fly without any restraint or reserve: His speech to the NAACP last week kicked butt. It was transcendent. It was inspirational.
"Now you know the thesis of this Education Week commentary by USA Today editorial page writer Richard Whitmire; here are the key paragraphs...." Read it here.
Let's assume for a moment that the current trajectory of the presidential election remains the same and Obama wins by a significant margin, maybe even a landslide.
For the better part of a week, Washington has been consumed by the Shirley Sherrod pseudo-scandal, leading many pundits to ponder race relations in America circa 2010.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction just released the state's preliminary school ratings under the No Child Left Behind act, and a mere 79 schools were found to be "needing improvement." That's about three percent of all public schools in Wisconsin--practically a rounding error! Wisconsin has figured it out.
"That's my take on the new Marcus Winters/Jay Greene/Julie Trivitt study on the impact of high-stakes testing on low-stakes subjects in Florida...." Read it here.
There’s a movement afoot in Hawaii to do away with the elected school board…The source of frustration, according to the group leading the anti-Board charge, Children First, are Furlough Fridays, a cost-cutting measure that the Board of Ed said would save over $400 m
Among the various hats I wear (though please don’t tell Checker “School boards are an aberration, an anachronism, an educational sinkhole. Put this dysfunctional arrangement out of its misery” Finn) is that of member of the Board of Education.
School reformers in Ohio have been struggling for more than a decade to make Ohio welcoming for charter schools. Charters have had to fight in the legislature, at the courthouse, and in the court of public opinion to protect and defend their mere existence…However, all operators must be held accountable, as they work for the children, communities, and taxpayers where they run schools.
Ohio's charter school program dodged a bullet this recent budget cycle (here).
In 2007 we commissioned the well-respected economists Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky to analyze Ohio’s State Teachers Retirement System.
In March, President Obama told a Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter that "the number of children going to the Cleveland Public Schools who are actually prepared to go to college (is) probably one out of seven or eight or ten. And that's just not acceptable.
The debate in education at the local and state level is far from placid (as Mike recently described it), and is sometimes incredibly toxic because the issues affect our children and our collective future.
The Fordham Institute is unique in the school reform sector in that we have offices in both Washington, DC and Ohio. From the Buckeye State vantage point, we see a growing disconnect between reformers inside the Beltway and those toiling in the states.
During last night's prime-time press conference, President Obama was asked about shared sacrifices during these tough times. The president noted that these are indeed difficult times for many Americans.
Charter schools are different from traditional district schools in that they are free of many regulations and operating constraints, but in return for their freedoms they are held accountable for their results. Those charter schools that fail to deliver results over time are closed, the theory holds.
In the news business, reporters have a saying for a boiler plate quote an editor can remove to tighten a story. It's "throw-away" and that's exactly what the governor's response to the Fordham/Paul Hill study deserves.
As today is the 20th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I wanted to share some text from a series of interviews I conducted with Wiktor Kulerski in the late 1990s.
