Obama launches his "Race to the Center"
Well that didn't take long.??Just a few weeks ago the conventional wisdom was that federal education spending would go up, up, up forever.
Well that didn't take long.??Just a few weeks ago the conventional wisdom was that federal education spending would go up, up, up forever.
More great stuff out of New York City and Baltimore. The leaders of both systems have realized that the old district model is irreparable broken, so they're creating something new.
Don't miss tomorrow morning's event at AEI, where a group of panelists (Cain, Carey, Hess, Schneider, and me) will discuss the major education reform happenings during the Obama administration's first year. --Andy Smarick
The New Yorker has a lengthy profile of Arne Duncan in its??February 1??issue. A colleague of mine??pointed out this segment in particular: ???Duncan, who is forty-five, is six feet five and long-limbed, with a pale face that tapers to a wedgelike chin.??? ....Nice.
Thirteen bucks. That's the cost of the ???Race to the Top??? for every man, woman, and child in the United States. (You do the math: $4 billion divided by 300 million.) Chump change, and well worth the investment, considering the flurry of recent state education reform activity motivated by the federal program, right?
The Washington Post weighs in on Maryland, the nation's most disappointing RTT state ED to unveil new National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies
"If we are seeing a decline in literacy standards among young children, it is in spite of text messaging, not because of it." ??? Dr. Clare Wood, Reader in Development Psychology, University of Coventry
Now that the dust has settled from the stampede of states turning in Race to the Top applications and media outlets far and wide covering the deadline from every angle possible, our attention should turn to making sure this promising program does as much good as possible. How do we make sure the money doesn't go to sustain the status quo like previous ARRA education money?
The ESEA reauthorization issue that most intrigues me is the extent to which Secretary Duncan is serious about moving ED away from compliance and toward incentives. He's alluded to this from time to time, and I wrote about it briefly about a month ago.
A while back, I called Maryland the most disappointing Race to the Top state in America.
After literally months of daily stories in local and national newspapers about Race to the Top--often dozens per day--today my Google Reader account had ZERO articles on the RTT.
???They put too much borrowing and Band-Aids on basic education. They can't do that forever. That's why there is really a crisis right upon us.??? ???Kenneth Cull, Superintendent of Illinois School District 69
That's the title of my editorial in the brand-new Education Gadfly.
When a Chicago study came out last year, reporting that students who were displaced by Ren10 school closures didn't learn more if they were reassigned to similarly low performing schools, there was mega hand-wringing and lots of "I-told-you-sos" from opponents of closure
Make sure to sign up for next week's event on one of the hottest issues around, school turnarounds.
Big happenings in edu-land today. Andy Rotherham, education policy leader, founder of Ed Sector, and the fingers behind Eduwonk, is helping launch "Bellwether Education Partners,"??a new full-service nonprofit to help education reform organizations. He's partnering up with NewSchools co-founder Kim Smith, former Bain consultant??Mary Wells, and Monisha Lozier,??formerly of Korn/Ferry.
???Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a community to graduate a student.??? ???Dana Herreman, Curriculum Director of Newark, OH public schools
Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts??last night jolted the political world, and may spell the end for President Obama's health care legislation. But Flypaper readers want to know: what are the edu-implications?
You can find whatever your heart desires on the internet, and that's in part thanks to something called open source. It's a bit of an amorphous term, but that hasn't stopped this Utah virtual charter school from diving in to this potentially revolutionizing movement. Open source is just as its name implies--open.
Race to the Top is causing quite the buzz this week and??our Andy Smarick ??has been busy sharing his thoughts on the matter with many reporters. What does he make of it?
Quotable: "We are not just chasing a shiny penny, we are supporting reform." ??? Dwight Jones, Colorado Education Commissioner
Today is the first RTT deadline. States seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in the first round of payouts need to send their applications in by close of business today.
In very meaningful RTT news, Colorado has left important reforms out of its proposal. The state decided against making tough calls on teacher evaluations, potentially knocking a frontrunner back several spots.
Checker was on Fox & Friends this morning, discussing state high school exit exams.
We haven't even gotten the results of RTT round one and Obama is already asking for another $1.35 billion to continue the competition a third year. Honestly, this is absurd. We've seen some good and some so-so legislation come out of the promise of RTT dollars.
Check out Quick and the Ed on Iowa's faux RTT reforms. Looks like the state is barely changing its weak charter law and selling it as more. As Chad Aldeman writes:
Per the Universal State Application Theorem (that stakeholder support varies inversely with proposal strength
I took a hiatus from doing these "read your Gadfly" posts...but this edition is just so juicy, so??tantalizing, that I would simply be a terrible person to deny you the pleasure of reading it. We termed it the "Breaking News Issue," because the edition was just so timely you might wonder how we even got it out with all that recent material.
If you missed our excellent joint-conference with AEI on Monday, no need to beat yourself up! You can watch it (over the long weekend) on C-Span, here.