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First ever: Education Next Book Club Podcast
Check out the first ever Education Next Book Club Podcast!
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Quotable & notable
?I definitely think that students need to get involved in decision-making on a deeper level, beyond simply being on an associated student government or student council.'' * - Adora Svitak, Child prodigy writer and poet
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CAP, Ed Trust, and federal policy foolishness
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Memories of David Kearns
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Quotable & notable
?For more than 30 years, spending has risen while performance stayed relatively flat. Now we need to raise performance without spending a lot more'' * - Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
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Finn on NBC and ABC
Fordham's president, Chester E. Finn, Jr., has been in front of the camera a lot lately.
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Talkin' some more about U.S. history standards
As you probably know, we recently released a?new study,?The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011). Our reviewers, historians Sheldon M.
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Teachers Speak
My ?`Great Teacher' Trap? (GTT) post from last week elicited some comments from teachers that I think warrant some more discussion.? The GTT was my take on the Carnegie Corporation's ?talent strategy?
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Bloomberg loses the thread on unions
I nearly choked on my morning coffee when I read this quote from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's New York Times op-ed on public sector unions:
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The Story in Indiana
For those of you following the public union fights in the Midwest, I recommend Steven Greenhouse's story in today's New York Times.?
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Fire em all!
For better or worse, the current public employee union battles are forcing many educators to confront some deep (shall we say existential?) questions.? As Mike pointed out yesterday, DFERS especially, ?are struggling to figure out what to say about Wisconsin.?
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Disingenuous Dems
As Alexander Russo rightly noted yesterday, many reformers (especially those of the Democratic persuasion) are struggling to figure out what to say about Wisconsin.
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Quotable & notable
?Mastery is proving that restarts are not impossible.'' * - Justin Cohen, president of the ?school turnaround group? at Mass Insight
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Charter Schools
Catholic ethos, public education
That's the title of my new story in Education Next, about an experiment to take a successful religious school education model to the public sector. The subtitle of the story sums it up nicely:? ?How the Christian Brothers came to start two charter schools in Chicago.? Let the walls come tumbling down!
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Nuts'
While the New York Times headline was impressive ? Leader of Teachers' Union Urges Dismissal Overhaul ? Mike wasn't fooled.? ?In any other field,?
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Gold-plated benefits and teacher recruitment
Say you're a top-performing senior majoring in chemistry at Lawrence or Ripon. You're thinking about becoming a high school science teacher. Would you prefer a $35,000 salary with two pensions and health care benefits in retirement, or would you rather have a 25% higher salary and benefits similar to those your friends going into the private sector receive? Odds are you'd prefer the latter ?
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Memories
I'm reviewing a book by Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein, that will hit shelves on Thursday, March 3rd.
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Midwest unrest: The view from Washington
As union protests in Madison, Columbus, and elsewhere loop continuously on cable TV, it cannot be easy to be an education-reform-minded Democrat. They're honorable folks; their commitment to bold education reform seems genuine; and they've generally been willing to push for a host of promising changes in policy and practice that rub teacher unions the wrong way.
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Quotable & notable
?The mere act of merging the two [majority-black & majority-white Memphis City Schools] really provides no education value, but not merging the two ... that provides educational harm for our students''* - Martavius Jones, Memphis School Board Member
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Quotable & notable
?One thing is clear: We will not reverse this trajectory or regain our global standing without the powerful work of America's great teachers.'' '*
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Hitting the airwaves to talk about U.S. history
Fordham folks have done a number of radio interviews recently to discuss our new study, The State of State U.S. History Standards 2011. I wanted to share just a few examples.
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Curriculum & Instruction
Our obsession with tests
Just when I thought we were making progress in devising a national core curriculum, everyone is already talking about tests based on the Common Core, which is still in its infancy.?
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One hand clapping
In an essay about the fracas in Wisconsin Jonah Goldberg argues in the L.A. Times that ?Public unions have been a 50-year mistake?.
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Education news nuggets
As we emerge from a weekend of celebrating our founding fathers, we turn to Whoopi Goldberg for some answers on ways to view
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The 'Great Teacher' Trap
The theme of the recent Education Writers Association (EWA) event at the Carnegie Corporation (which I mentioned in my post on Saturday) was ?the promise and pitfalls of improving the teaching profession.??
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In Wisconsin, a battle over "local control"
Education politics just got weirder: liberals are now for "local control," and Tea Party conservatives are against it. At least that one's way to read the situation in Madison. [quote]
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The unions' purpose
Richard Kahlenberg takes on Michelle Rhee, whose ?dramatic, often authoritarian, style is ill-suited for education.? He also takes on the ?elite press,? which has been far too uncritical of the former schools chancellor because she is ?a hard-working Ivy League graduate? who reporters simply ?respect?. . .?as one of their own.?
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Quotable & notable
?Most education researchers?recognize that Rhee's simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy, and that her dramatic, often authoritarian, style is ill-suited for education''* - Richard D. Kahlenberg, Senior Fellow at the Century Foundation