Last week, Justin Baeder at Ed Week's "On Performance" blog had a post arguing that adopting policies that force teachers to copy the teaching strategies of effective teachers is bound to fail.*
Catherine Gewertz (via John Fensterwald of the "Educated Guess" blog) has a post today about a group of seven California districts who are coming together to draft Common
It's Christmas in Rhode Island: the state Department of Education has released a comprehensive new set of financial data for district and charter schools throughout the state.
If Horace Mann was the key educational figure of the 19th century, and John Dewey of the first half of the 20th, then Al Shanker, the legendary leader of the American Federation of Teachers, deserves t
?Unfortunately, it is a characteristic of reform movements?for its participants to feel they are on the edge of history, solving with new ideas and new tools the problems that flummoxed everyone before..'' *
Well, it's official.? According to Sam Dillon in the NYT, Steve Barr and the charter organization he founded, Green Dot, are going their separate ways.? In fact, the separation has been long in coming.?
Though Deborah Meier's newest post on Bridging Differences is ostensibly about hypocrisy (she says she tells her left-wing friends that ?we should
The Wall Street Journal ran today an article about Portugal's rickety educational system and how it has affected the nation's economy: Portugal is the least educated country in Europe, and it is also the poorest. ?Without budget cuts,?
Readers will recall the appearance, in the summer of 2008, of an article in the Atlantic by a pseudonymous Professor X [insert X-Men joke here to flaunt pop-culture cred] that relayed his experience teaching basic English courses at two colleges, one a four-year, private instituti
Here's some food for thought: should toenails dictate what we should eat or should we leave it up
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, a prospective 2012 GOP presidential candidate, challenged Republicans to take a critical look at the defense budget earlier this month when he told a reporter in Iowa, ???Anybody who says you can't save money at the Pentagon has never been to the Pentagon.
?The heroic efforts of both TFA and non-TFA teachers are motivated by the belief that all children can learn?but they do not negate truths like healthy children are better learners, or children with stable home environments and fewer distractions in their non-school lives are better able to take advantage of the educational opportunities afforded them.'' <
One of the dirtiest words in American education today is ?tracking.? Reformers and ed-school types alike deride the approach as racist, classist, and worthy of eradication. And if they are talking about the practice of confining some kids?typically poor or minority or both?into dead-end tracks with soulless, ditto-driven instruction, they are absolutely right.
Some are less than pleased with Florida's governor, Rick Scott, who, it seems likely, let it be known to certain persons that he wanted a new state education commissioner. Eric Smith, the current commissioner, resigned this week, noting that he was leaving so Scott could have input ?on the type of leader to pursue his goals for education.?
At a KIPP charter school in Jacksonville today, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed SB 726, a bill that will set up a teacher evaluation system that judges educators based, in large part, on student test scores, institute merit pay, and end tenure for new teachers (current teachers will still be
While having a very interesting conversation over at my post about The Digital Divide and the Knowledge Deficit (about the recent MacArthur sponsored conference at Hechinger), I noticed a fascinating story by Sharon Begley at Newsweek called ?
NPR's Morning Edition has been running a series on youth violence in Chicago ? this morning's story is here.? And it's worth paying attention to.
Mike and Rick explain the merits of student tracking, debate whether collective bargaining matters, and spar over ESEA reauthorization. Amber heads to the Land of Enchantment for a study on CBAs and student achievement. And Chris deplores drivers: Keep the cell phones in your pockets! [powerpress]
?Our best school systems are resting on their laurels, and frankly, there are a lot of parents who recognize when education is not great... they need the ability to say 'This isn't cutting it for my child.''*
Ever since their creation two decades ago, charter schools have been defined by three fundamental?if somewhat contradictory?ideas: accountability for results, school-level autonomy, and meaningful parental choice. That the charter notion has stood the test of time is a testament to the power of these three ideas.
While incentives are offered to states to raise college graduation rates, law students are offered?dogs?
A brilliant report from Mike Antonucci at?the Education Intelligence Agency (EIA) paints a dark picture of what the recent public union defeats in Wisconsin and elsewhere mean to the National Education Association.? ?There should be no mistake about it,? he writes, ?NEA sees them as a threat to its very existence.?
?Even professions like long-jump or tackling people on a football field or hitting a baseball, the average ability is so much higher today because there's this great feedback system, measurement system'' *
Today, Vice President Joe Biden will formally announce another round of competitive, federal education grants, this time for colleges. According to the New York Times, the grants are designed to help the administration ?meet its goal of adding eight million college graduates by 2020? and making the U.S.
Bob Herbert writes about race and schools in today's New York Times, specifically, about how ?poor black and Hispanic public school students? will never receive decent educations until the ?toxic concentrations of poverty? that exist in their schools are dispersed.
The CCSS ELA standards are, as you may remember, heavily (though certainly not exclusively) skills driven. The choice to focus on skills rather than content was deliberate and the standards authors themselves acknowledged that states would likely want to enhance these skills-driven standards with additional content.
At last night's school board budget ?workshop? I felt the sinking sensation that passengers on the Titanic must have felt:??it's too late for life boats. The trouble is, I felt that way last year as well.??The big difference between the Titanic and my school district is this: our ship doesn't really sink and we don't change directions.?
