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President Bush left behind
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.
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"Proficiency" Pollyanas
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
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Race, class, and charter schools
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
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Rhee's moment in TIME
It's hard not to root for Michelle Rhee, the butt-kicking, straight-talking, no-nonsense Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
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Scalpel, meet ineffective federal programs
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
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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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Senioritis
As a few smart guys predicted fifteen months ago, the budget crisis is putting serious pressure on teacher seniority as a
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Sol Stern: Mayor Bloomberg shouldn't get to grade himself
"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.
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Sol Stern's latest target: Russ Whitehurst
"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.
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Sotomayor and the schools
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.
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Teacher, can you spare a dime?
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.
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The 100th day
President Barack Obama's "first 100 days" come to an end today, as you may have noticed from the barrage of fawning press coverage (not all of it on the editorial
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The National Conference of State Legislators-Who-Also-Happen-To-Be-Classroom-Teachers-and-NEA-Members
I'm currently on the Amtrak back from Philly, where I spoke before the education committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures. I decided to be provocative, purposely trying to raise their blood pressure a bit. And I knew my talk wouldn't be popular. But you know the old adage about knowing your audience?
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The Obama education strategy: Hire the reformers, bail out the states, buy off the unions
That's what it's starting to look like, at least if the rumors swirling around Washington have any merit.
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The Obamas' visit to a charter school: Red Hot!
Get out that trusty Reform-o-Meter because Team Obama is finally showing some heat.
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The problem with "school boards are the problem"
For two weeks now I’ve been meaning to write about this provocative Washington Post column by Montgomery County (MD) school board member Laura Berthiaume.
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Fresh faces at Fordham
We welcome several new additions to our Ohio and D.C. staffs. In Dayton, Althea Barnett and Kathryn Mullen Upton are managing our charter school sponsorship work and Allison Porch is analyzing education in the Buckeye State. In D.C., Martin Davis, Liam Julian, and intern Michael O'Keefe are toiling away at Gadfly and ushering in a new wave of reports.
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Live: From Brown to "Bong Hits"
Wide-ranging presentations and lively discussion today at the AEI/Fordham conference on judicial involvement in education!
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Peering into the classroom
Last week, Laura Pohl (Fordham's new media director) and I had the privilege of visiting our Ohio colleagues. A particularly memorable part of the trip was peering in on two charter schools in Columbus that Fordham sponsors (authorizes). Both schools are in their first year and both serve just one grade at the moment, but will expand.
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Some mates are seeing red
Teachers in Australia are being told to avoid using red pens to mark their students' work, because the color can be seen as aggressive. Huh? I had to re-read that one, just to make sure I understood.
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Another indictment of "turnarounds"
Anyone interested in what to do about America’s most persistently failing schools--and especially those caught up in today’s turnaround craze--should consider Part II of this report [2009 Brown Center Report on American Education] a must-read.
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Bleeding-heart conservative
Jack Kemp, former congressman, cabinet secretary, and VP nominee--and one of my favorite politicos of all time--passed away on Saturday. Kemp had a stellar professional football career and then turned his preternatural energy and good humor
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Cleveland rocks!
With all of the attention directed toward the DC voucher program, we could be misled into believing that this represents the current and future of the private school choice debate.
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Detroit and skunk works
Detroit is probably our most battered city...I don't know how things are going to play out, but I suspect that there's a better than even chance that DPS will require a major intervention, whether it's because the system can't make payroll, the school board asks for substantial outside assistance, or something else.
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Duncan-Bloomberg event
Despite the rainy weather, early morning start, and day-before-Thanksgiving scheduling, the CAP event with Secretary Duncan and NYC Mayor Bloomberg was standing room only. Going in it wasn’t at all clear what the actual purpose of the event was (
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Duncan on turnarounds
As Mike just wrote, Secretary Duncan was at the National Charter Schools Conference today, and he spoke about turnarounds.
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Eduwonk and charters
Eduwonk has...a charter post up that I need to take issue with—if not with this exact position, then with the issue to which it speaks. His basic case is that district superintendents are district superintendents not superintendents of their cities’ charter sectors.
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Fantastic RTT teacher section from Florida
There are lots of very interesting and very exciting elements in the teacher section of Florida’s RTT application.
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How in the world is Kentucky a [RTT] finalist?
Kentucky may have the most maddeningly indecipherable teacher section of any state RTT application. It certainly has as weak a section as any of the finalists.