Obama's virtual town hall
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...is here.??First up, take a closer look at our new voucher and accountability paper.
Ron Zimmer, Brian Gill, Kevin Booker, Stephane Lavertu, Tim Sass, and John WitteRAND EducationMarch 2009
When the federal government starts talking in billions, is it too much to ask that the money be well spent? Apparently so. In the rush to get funds out to states and districts ASAP, education stimulus dollars are being dispersed via a tangle of federal formulae.
John D. Bransford, Deborah J. Stipek, Nancy J. Vye, Louis M. Gomez, and Diana Lam, eds.Harvard Education PressFebruary 2009
Michael Gurian, Kathy Stevens, and Peggy DanielsJossey-Bass Publishing2009
If it's sensational, it'll sell papers. That's the motto of most periodicals and the tack the New York Post was surely taking with this subhead: "Teachers watched porn on work computers, falsified records to pad their pockets, faked doctors' notes to go on vacation." The New York Department of Education received 2,886 misconduct accusations last year--the most ever.
The Washington Post's Jay Mathews is ready to close the book on vouchers. While he supports them himself, he thinks "[t]his nation of public school backers just won't go for vouchers." But hold the eulogizing for just a sec. Simply because D.C.'s program is on the block doesn't mean there's not hope beyond the Beltway.
What do outer space and Appalachia have in common? They're both topics that students could encounter in reading comprehension passages on typical state tests. And they illustrate E.D. Hirsch's big beef with such assessments: they mean to test students' reading abilities, but they really test students' knowledge on randomly-chosen topics.
Conventional wisdom says that most states and school districts will make budget cuts in the most boneheaded manner possible: lay off their young teachers, eliminate art and music classes, decimate sports programs, and so forth. And evidence from the current recession indicates that this conventional wisdom is usually right.
As we write, the fate of the District of Columbia voucher initiative (a.k.a. Opportunity Scholarship Program) hangs in the balance. Ambiguous, ambivalent remarks from President Obama's camp and Secretary Duncan certainly haven't helped to secure its future and its Congressional and interest-group enemies seem bent on ending it--with a possible reprieve for current beneficiaries.
The trusty Reform-o-Meter has become a little rusty lately; that's because there hasn't been a lot of action at the U.S. Department of Education worth rating. This is particularly true since we still don't know who the picks for Deputy Secretary, Undersecretary, or Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education will be.
The best and brightest among educational entrepreneurs are often called rock stars. Though I can hardly imagine two things more different than, say, a ???????no excuses???????
During last night's prime-time press conference, President Obama was asked about shared sacrifices during these tough times. The president noted that these are indeed difficult times for many Americans.
Washington's "Opportunity Scholarship Program" has gotten a lot of attention lately, what with Democrats in Congress moving to kill it and the Obama Administration seeking
Private schools that enroll students through the Ohio EdChoice Program (the state's school voucher program) should be held accountable for their academic results on a sliding scale, according to a report issued today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
There was a time when I was generally skeptical, even hostile, towards the views of Charles Murray, at least as they pertained to education.
This weekend's Washington Post offered an anecdotal look at DC's Capital Gains Program, aka Washington's own pay kids for performance system. The program has its logistical issues, but one of great significance has cropped up: theft.
The Ohio Academy of Science has provided a little reality check to Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland's evidence-based education proposals and found them lacking--actually, way lacking.
As I continue to make my way through the gigantic stack of articles and reports I should've read over the last year and a half or so, I keep finding interesting and timely stuff.
My son Nico was born in 2007, and he wasn't alone. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (and reported by the Times), more babies were born in 2007 than any other year in U.S. history. The 4.3 million births were even more than the number in 1957, which was the height of the Baby Boom.
According to a new report by RAND, charter schools don't produce substantially different academic results than their district peers.
The creative team over at C. Murray Consulting, a web technology company in Rhode Island, has highlighted us on their blog.
Larissa Campuzano, Mark Dynarski, Roberto Agodini, and Kristina RallMathematica Policy Research for the Institute of Education SciencesFebruary 2009
MetLife FoundationFebruary 2009
These are heady times in education policy. The $110 billion in education stimulus spending and tens of billions more in the omnibus budget have launched a frenzy of activity.
We've long known that "last hired, first fired" rules cost districts cash and undermine teacher quality to boot. It's taken him his fifteen-year tenure, but Rhode Island education commissioner Peter McWalters finally agrees.
High school students who are newly arrived from another country, sans English skills, present a time crunch dilemma for educators. "High schools have to make a pragmatic choice when it comes to these kids," explains Peter B. Bedford, a history teacher at Cecil D. Hylton School in Woodbridge, Virginia. "Are you going to focus on educating them, or socially integrating them?
Reselling a couple of $60,000 classroom trailers should bring in a nice chunk of change, right? So thought district officials in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Enter anonymous district bureaucrat, charged with selling the costly portable learning spaces on eBay.
Philadelphia superintendent Arlene Ackerman hopes to reform the city's most troubled schools by converting them into charters--and KIPP's on the short list to help.