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How Louisiana can win
Possibly the biggest surprise of RTT scoring was that Louisiana came in 11th place (out of 16 finalists). I had them in second.
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Human capital or elitism constraining charter scale up?
I just had a chance to tackle Steven Wilson's "Success at Scale in Charter Schooling," an AEI Working Paper that generated a good bit of buzz late last year. Wilson found that the vast majority of teachers in the best urban charters are graduates of the nation's most elite colleges.
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i3
Yesterday, ED released its “proposed priorities” for the Investing in Innovation (or i3) fund, a $650 million program embedded in the federal stimulus legislation. I give the document a full treatment here, but here’s a quick and dirty explana
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i3 analysis
I’ve finally made it through the 377-page final application for the “Investing in Innovation” fund (i3) and several long supporting documents.
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Major disappointment
The US Department of Education had the opportunity today to send a clear signal--that the Race to the Top is an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that very good wouldn’t be good enough, that only the biggest and boldest plans would merit consideration.
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MD's vision on failing schools
Seldom do stakeholder committees convened by state departments of education put forward truly bold recommendations.
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New York blinks
This is a little wonky, but bear with me. The great part about section D2 of the Race to the Top application is that it gets progressively more reform-oriented as you move through it.
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No turnarounds; close and start new
As I've alluded to a number of times, I'm convinced that turnarounds are not a scalable strategy for fixing America's struggling urban school systems.
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Putting Central Falls in context
We all know about the plans to fire and replace teachers at the struggling Central Falls in Rhode Island. But it turns out this event is part of a bigger and more interesting story. First, the district is increasingly going charter….Second, Rhode Island Mayoral Academies is a nontrivial player in this all.
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Read the fine print
The administration chose Wisconsin as the site for the president’s Race to the Top speech yesterday, we’re told, because that state’s legislature is about to get rid of its data firewall. But did anyone read the bill in question?
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RTT math
In a previous post, I discussed the probability that Secretary Duncan will have reason to forgo spending down the remaining Race to the Top funding and send money back to the Treasury.
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Sector agnosticism in Philly
On a number of occasions, I’ve written about what I call “sector agnosticism” in urban education. It’s a simple concept: We shouldn’t care what sector a school belongs to (traditional public, charter public, or private); instead, we should judge schools based on their quality.
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Texas being Texas or more to the story?
Texas has become the first state to rebuff the Obama administration’s Race to the Top. Governor Rick Perry made the call, deciding that the size of the investment wasn’t worth the strings. Texas, he believes, can do education reform on its own.
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Thanks and best wishes to Nelson Smith
In 2004, after realizing that the Charter School Leadership Council, a loose coalition of pro-charter school organizations, couldn’t meet the needs of the burgeoning charter school sector, a number of the nation’s top charter leaders created the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools...Over the next five years, the leader they
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Why are union contracts the third rail?
The WSJ penned an interesting editorial yesterday on Secretary Duncan and Michelle Rhee, noting that, while the secretary supports important reforms, he hasn’t helped the chancellor in her donnybrook with the union.
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Wise investment? Lottery tickets
The Hassels have a new post up on Eduwonk about turnarounds. I’m generally a big fan of this talented duo and have been for years....But I think they’re still way off base regarding the doomed venture of school turnarounds.
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Calling for independent research
Economist Roland Fryer's Educational Innovation Laboratory is off to the races, thanks to the Broad Foundation, experimenting with new ways of incentivizing kids to learn in three big cities (New York, Chicago,
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Jay sets 'em straight
"Most ed reformers are drawn to their calling by one, or sometimes both, of two considerations: civil rights and economics. The first concern addresses the achievement gap between mostly white, upper-class students and their mostly minority, low-income peers. That this gap exists--and that it's shameful and unacceptable--is undeniable.
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Randi's (partly) right this time
"Unions are wrong about a lot of things, but it probably is indeed the case that some principals value loyalty over competence and consequently make stupid personnel decisions.
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Thinking differently
"I still don't like the snarky title of Mark Bauerlein's new book on how technology is blunting our reading and comprehension skills, but a recent piece in the Atlantic persuades me that he's at least right to claim that computers are changing how we think...." Read it here.
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Creating useful education data systems (it takes more than Race to the Top funds)
The L.A. Times describes California’s attempts to qualify for Race to the Top Funds both by changing state law to allow teacher- and student-level data to be connected (for teacher evaluations), and by laying plans for new databases.
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Detroit's new teacher contract
I wondered in October whether Robert Bobb, Detroit Public School’s Emergency Financial Manager, would be able to deliver on this goal for a transformative new union contract, in which the problems with tenure and teacher seniority are addressed.
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Is a financial day of reckoning for schools here yet?
There’s a lot to chew over in yesterday’s New York Times article by Sam Dillon, “Schools Aided by Stimulus Mone
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Panic in Detroit?*
John Merrow of Learning Matters has an interview here with Robert Bobb, Detroit Public School’s “Emergency Financial Manager,” who was brought in to help right a school district with a $259 million deficit that’s hemorrhaging student
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More on Ayers
"Nothing is more emblematic of the rampant intellectual incoherence and moral equivalence of our age than the current debate about whether Bill Ayers is a ‘terrorist....'" Read it here.
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Weighing NY charter school and district school demographics
New York City’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) recently published a report in which it said the area’s charter schools don’t serve at least the district-wide average of neediest students, despite serving an overwhelmingly poor population.
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Poor Rheesoning
"I'm told that Michelle Rhee, who moments ago wrapped up a 'Reporter Roundtable' here at the Fordham offices (I knew I noticed a soft glow emanating from our conference room), defended her plan to pay students for right behavior by pulling out the KIPP Card... Why, Rhee wondered, is her plan to pay D.C. students in cash any different from KIPP's program?
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The martyrs
"Clearly, it's struck a chord and it's worth unpacking: Why do so many teachers lean so heavily, when criticized, on the ‘you've never yourself been a teacher' argument?..." Read it here.
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If at first you don't succeed
"I hope the College Board catches the flack it deserves for its decision to (starting in 2010) show colleges only the SAT scores that the students who earn them choose to reveal--i.e., if Johnny takes the test 10 times, Johnny gets to show State U.
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More on integration (racial, socioeconomic, etc.)
"Interesting to note that liberals Kevin Drum and Matt Yglesias have both blogged recently about how socioeconomic and racial integration (the 2008 kind of integration, which seeks to overcome housing patterns; not the 1950s kind, which sought to overcome de jure separation of black and white) won't work...." Read it