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. Not so.
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. Not so.
So there was this report written to help a major US city improve its public schools. Local leaders had gone to Boston to learn about a number of????groundbreaking reforms that had generated????some pretty impressive results. They came back particularly impressed by Boston's new types of schools, well-trained teachers, and well-respected administrators.
Ok, so last week we saw a story or two out of New York describing how the teachers union gave city council members cue cards telling them what questions to ask during a hearing on charter schools. Yes, that definitely makes for an interesting discussion.
The Washington Post reports??that Loudoun County, Virginia, is using the federal stimulus funds intended for schools to prop up its county budget:
So concluded the Washington Post's editorial page on Saturday with a piece aptly subtitled,
Nope, no new Department picks to withstand some reform-o-meter treatment, but a dog. A Portuguese water dog, in fact, which will shortly take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
As Eric just reported, Loudoun County is playing games with its stimulus dollars. Specifically, it's asking schools to return county dollars and replacing them with federal dollars, presumably to help plug holes in other areas of the county's budget.
Diane Ravitch is not as enamored with mayoral control as Arne Duncan is. Read her new New York Times op-ed to see why.
At least when you can watch Fordham's event, "Can Budget Cuts Catalyze Education Reform?" on C-SPAN right now! (And for the next 90 minutes.)
Russ Whitehurst, the former head of IES (the body responsible for the DC voucher study), gives a thorough and authoritative explanation of the final report's release. It parallels the argument I made here.
If you haven't read this week's Gadfly, you should do so ASAP! Up first, Paul E. Barton, formerly of ETS and author of "'Failing' and 'Successful' Schools: How Can We Tell?" explains the grand illusion that is NCLB.
Do you ever dream about what you'd do if you were Secretary of Education? If you're a teacher, no doubt you'd work to make federal policy more teacher-friendly. If you're a researcher, you'd strive to make it more evidence-based (and to increase the R & D budget). And if you're a big-city superintendent?
Ok, hmmm........so maybe we need to institute an Obama Administration Education "Cool-O-Meter." Seems Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently jumped onstage at DC's crowded and popular 9:30 Club (at a Neko Case concert) to plug the new administration, talk about education and encourage people to go into teaching.
Check out Mike's recent appearance on FOX News. He discusses an issue that's sure to raise heated debate around dinner tables across the nation: lengthening the school year! Arne Duncan favors it . Find out if Mike does.....
Got sagging pants? Not if you go to Plantation High School in Broward County, Florida. That's because two teachers, inspired by President Barack Obama's comment last year that "brothers should pull up their pants," have launched a crusade against baggy offenders.
Kristine Lamm West and Elton MykereziUniversity of Minnesota, Twin CitiesPresented at National Council on Teacher Quality conference, "Help or Hindrance? The Impact of Teacher Roles, Rules and Rights on Teacher Quality," March 26, 2009
Teach for America hopes to place 20 corps members in Boston in the fall--but the Boston Teachers Union doesn't want them. "We already have hundreds of good 'surplus' teachers; we don't need [Teach for America] to provide us any help," claims BTU president Richard Stutman. "By coming here, you will only make matters worse." Clearly Mr. Stutman could learn a thing or two from Miss Manners.
In case it wasn't clear that teachers' pensions are about as sustainable as daily print newspapers, New Jersey is here to remind us.
Do you ever dream about what you'd do if you were Secretary of Education? If you're a teacher, no doubt you'd work to make federal policy more teacher-friendly. If you're a researcher, you'd strive to make it more evidence-based (and to increase the R & D budget). And if you're a big-city superintendent?
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act establishes the lofty goal of holding schools to account for all children achieving "proficiency" in reading and math by 2014--now barely five years away. As the nation now faces up to what to do next, it needs to squarely face the fact that NCLB's authors conjured four illusions--possibly because they were engaged in self-delusion.
While the phenomenon of unionized charter schools is only budding, parochial schools have a longer tradition of collective bargaining. But two Catholic schools in Staten Island may have found a way to shed the union albatross.
While D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee's battle over salary and tenure has gained much media attention, less heed has been paid to her plans to overhaul the District's teacher evaluation systems. Yet a consensus is growing that they need dramatic reform, too.
To the long, familiar list of reasons urban education has failed--too-powerful teacher unions, underfunded and mismanaged schools, poverty's ill effects--Education Secretary Arne Duncan has added another: lack of "leadership from the top." He's talking about mayors in particular, and he wants more of them in charge of urban school districts, à la Chicago, New York, Boston, and Washington