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.
I’ve finally made it through the 377-page final application for the “Investing in Innovation” fund (i3) and several long supporting documents.
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.
Seldom do stakeholder committees convened by state departments of education put forward truly bold recommendations.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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,
"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.
"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.
"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.
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.
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.
There’s a lot to chew over in yesterday’s New York Times article by Sam Dillon, “Schools Aided by Stimulus Mone
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
"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.
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.
"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?
"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.
"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.
"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
When U.S. Senator George Voinovich retires at the end of his current term in 2010 it will signal the end of progressive Republican education reform in Ohio.
Today marks the 23rd week of our Pick the next Deputy-Assistant-to-the-Assistant-Associate-Deputy-Secretary-for-School Safety contest! It looks like President Obama is holding out as long as possible before appointing one lucky American to this post, which means he basks in our continuing patience as we continue to lose it.
[Wednesday] is a European showdown: Spain and Germany [go] head to head to determine who will face Netherlands on Sunday for the final…We turn our comparison to Iker Casillas of Spain and Philipp Lahm of Germany to compare what their educational lives (on average) looked like, given their countries of origin…Read it