The Grinch who stole Easter
This past winter holiday season was a tough one for culturally sensitive principals.
This past winter holiday season was a tough one for culturally sensitive principals.
This week, Mike and Janie discuss the November implications of edujobs, the i3 winners, and what Atlanta’s cheating scandal might mean for standards. Then Amber tells us about a new reading intervention—even Britney Spears’s biography can combat summer learning loss—and Stafford wonders: Would you throw yourself down the stairs to get out of a job evaluation?
This week, Mike and Rick profess their undying love for one another, which everyone already knew, anyway. We tried to interview somebody important, but they didn't want to be associated with scatological humor. News of the Weird is going to be frowned upon by the masses.
This week, Mike and Rick discuss Bush's proposal for NCLB reauthorization, how to help kids in Denver, and how to take a robot to the prom. Chris Swanson tells us why Quality Counts 2007 is worthwhile, and Education News of the Weird is hot for teacher.
Dismayed that they’ve all lost their fearless leaders at the same time, Ed Sector, the Center on Education Policy, and the New America Foundation have joined forces to identify a new Czar of Left-Leaning Ed Policy in Washington.
This week, Mike and Rick discuss Denver, school choice, and tattoos. Research Minute takes a week off, and Education News of the Weird is retired for Rate That Reform! Click here to listen through our website and peruse past editions.
Statewide textbook adoption distorts the market, entices extremist groups to hijack the curriculum, enriches the textbook cartel, and papers the land with mediocre instructional materials that cannot fulfill their important education mission.
This week, Mike and the National Council on Teacher Quality's Sandi Jacobs discuss whether liberals should support Reading First, the worst teachers deserve $10,000 to quit, and the best teachers deserve $125,000 to teach. Jeff Kuhner is outraged about lawyers, unions, theft, and Elliot Spitzer, and Education News of the Weird is, psst...yo...got any Milk Duds?
The newest issue of Education Next is out and, as usual, it contains some top-notch stuff. (We're especially partial to the national standards material.) Check it out here!
In recent months, policymakers and policy wonks alike have been singing the praises of value-added analysis, which focuses on the achievement gains that a school or teacher elicits rather than just looking at how high the students score, since high or low scores of students in a school may reflect the socioeconomic makeup of the student body (and other "input" variables) rather than the quality
Or at least the Office of Management and Budget’s education branch does. They’re looking for a program examiner, who would analyze on-going policies and programs, especially legislative proposals, for conformance with Presidential policies, and review and prepare budgetary documents and other materials for Presidential programs related to education.
Justin Torres raises some interesting points in his review of Arthur Levine's new report on education leadership programs (see "Levine versus the ed schools"). In particular, I think the idea of folding education leadership programs into M.B.A. programs is very timely.
This week, Mike and Rick talk about developing talent; Winerip's illogic; and separating students by race, gender, etc. Tom Loveless stops by to talk about his new Brown Center report (reviewed below), and Education News of the Weird hits the campaign trail. Click here to listen through our website and peruse past editions.
This week, Mike and Rick discuss New York City's Leadership Academy principals' lackluster results, charter school transparency in Pennsylvania, and whether we should try to encourage lower levels of truancy.
The Senate Public Charter Schools Caucus, announced last week by Senators Lamar Alexander and Mary Landrieu, will provide a vehicle for informing members of Congress, their staffs, and the public about the role and potential of the nation's charter schools.
This week, Mike and Rick discuss possible stimulus-stimulated reforms, whether grades should include more than just content mastery, and if we should letting students who pass their classes and the state test out of school early. Then Amber tells us about a (snooze-inducing) new ETS report on the achievement gap and Rate that Reform encounters Big Brother, school edition.
School Choice Ohio, an organization that seeks to expand and protect educational choice options, seeks an executive director who will be responsible for the organization's overall operations.
As always, the National Education Association convention, recently concluded in Los Angeles, was quite a circus.
This week, Andy and Stafford discuss Denver’s plan to make charter schools abide by school assignment boundaries, Maine’s teacher licensure confidentiality law, and what happens when increasing the charter cap in Tennessee doesn’t yield any more charters.
The verdict is in--this is the big one! Where, may you ask, must you be "seen" in your latest Jimmy Choos--err respectable think tanker loafers?
That's the January 29, 1986 headline I imagined as I observed the ruckus over Barack Obama's innocuous, well-meaning and mildly uplifting address to U.S. schoolkids today. I refer, of course, to the Challenger space shuttle catastrophe, observed on television by millions of American children from their classrooms in part because schoolteacher Christa McCauliffe was part of the crew.
As the Washington Post is reporting, the draft K-11 "common core" standards are due to be published any moment. Our own Checker Finn has studied the reading standards and is impressed.
The NGA has asked us to clarify that it doesn't view PISA as the "holy grail of international standards and assessments" ("The 2008 Brown Center Report on American Education: How Well are American Students Learning?," February 26, 2009). PISA was mentioned in its recent benchmarking report as one of several
This week, Mike and Rick chat about the suburbs, the College Board, and Raleigh. We've got an interview with Liam Julian, who tells us about the newly launched Fordham Fellows program, and Education News of the Weird is less education, less news, less weird, more jokes!
Patriciorum numerum auxi consul quintum iussu populi et senatus. Senatum ter legi, et in consulatu sexto censum populi conlega M. Agrippa egi. Lustrum post annum alterum et quadragensimum feci, quo lustro civium Romanorum censa sunt capita quadragiens centum millia et sexaginta tria millia. Tum iterum consulari cum imperio lustrum solus feci C. Censonno et C.
Have you bought your copy of Troublemaker, by Gadfly-in-Chief Chester E. Finn, Jr.? If not, here's some motivation.
Are you fed up with the status quo in education? Do you have an idea for an innovative new venture, but lack the guidance and funds to operationalize it? Then you might be the perfect candidate for Mind Trust’s Education Entrepreneur Fellowship.
Here’s what we know about previous attempts to fix America’s most persistently failing schools. Turnarounds in other fields seldom work. Turnarounds in education have even lower success rates. Despite decades of effort, we still don’t have a reliable playbook for turning a very low-performing school into a good school, much less a great school.
LOL, txting is tot. nbd, so says the prelim fndings of a nu stdy from Coventry University. In fact, students who used the most phonologically-based text abbreviations--such as “nite” instead of night--were the best spellers.