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Puppies and kittens
This week, Mike and Rick chat about the Navy, incarceration in Buffalo, and the aesthetic pleasures of Brown Center Reports.
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Putting data to use
Every day, teachers, administrators, superintendents, and policy officials make important decisions based on insufficient or unreliable information. What if you could help? As a Strategic Data Project (SDP) fellow, you could be placed in a school district, charter network, or state education agency to bring your statistical know-how and high quality research methods to bear on those decisions.
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Quality education should trump district damage control
In order to fully understand the magnitude of claims that districts don’t collaborate very well with charter schools, despite much jabber to the contrary, conside
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Quality reading
The Teacher Quality Bulletin is the National Council on Teacher Quality's bi-monthly newsletter of scintillating, must-read commentary for anyone interested in issues affecting in-the-classroom education. Its latest issue is a real peach, plump with juicy opinion about the complacency of American parents when choosing their children's teachers, among other items.
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Quality teachers by any means necessary
There are a variety of ways for people from nontraditional backgrounds to enter teaching, from state alternative certification policies to programs like Teach for America and the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE). But is it enough?
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Question authorities
Gather the family ‘round the fire for a live chat with Checker Finn and Rick Hess, today (10/4) at 3 p.m. They'll be taking your questions and live-chatting on Ed Week about their new book, No Remedy Left Behind. Click here.
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Race to Delaware
Round one Race to the Top winner Delaware is poised to put their plans into action. But to do so, they need to fill a number of positions, including some managerial ones. Folks are needed to head and help in the turnaround, charter school, and teacher and leader effectiveness strands, and the state’s department of education wants to hire quickly, so act now.
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Race to the Top seeks reviewers
As states scramble to win money from Arne Duncan’s discretionary fund, the Education Department has its own scramble: finding reviewers for the Race to the Top applications. Are you one of Duncan’s “disinterested superstars”?
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Racing to national tests?
While everyone in educator-land obsesses over the $4 billion competition among states for Race to the Top (RTT) funding, the Education Department is readying a separate competition for less than one-tenth as much money that may nonetheless prove far more consequential for American education over the long term.
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Randi's political prowess
In her Tuesday speech at the Press Club, AFT President Randi Weingarten attempted to take the teacher-policy steering wheel back from Arne Duncan, who’s been driving since the Race to the Top motoring began. The big news is her willingness to reconsider due process rules and to revamp teacher evaluations. Ms.
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Rats guarding Baltimore's cheese
This week, Mike and guest host Howie Schaffer chat about breakups in Philly, charter madrassas, and more automatons. Education News of the Weird is... "Food Fight"! Click here to listen through our website and peruse past editions.
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Ravitch changes mind, again
We regret the need to cancel next week’s book event for Diane Ravitch, but the author has cut short her promotional tour for The Demise and Reincarnation of the Not-So-Great American School System to finish up her next new book, provisionally titled Vouching for Vouchers II: How School Choice and Accountability Will Save America’s Schools After All.
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Ravitch explains
Read this week’s editorial and find your curiosity piqued? Don’t worry, you’re not out of luck.
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Ravitch takes AEI by storm, on video
Watch Diane Ravitch, Bill Galston, Mark Schneider, Dennis Van Roekel, and Rick Hess debate Diane’s new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, here.
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Reading First, OII second
Gadfly is charmed that Secretary Margaret Spellings has appointed the very able Christopher Doherty to serve as the "acting" head of the Office of Innovation and Improvement, replacing (at least temporarily) Nina (see here).
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Ready the popcorn
On Tuesday, April 17, from 8 to 9 p.m., the U.S. Department of Education will air, on its well-reviewed television program Education News Parents Can Use, a show called "Charters and School Choice." More information is available here.
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Ready to think outside the box?
On November 30, from 5:30 to 7:00 PM, Rick Hess, joined by an all-star line-up, will discuss education in the 21st century as it relates to his new book about previous centuries, The Same Thing Over and Over. Learn more and register here.
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Rebuild the Big Easy
New Schools for New Orleans is recruiting a talented and diverse team of passionate people willing to do whatever it takes to build and sustain great schools. Current openings on the NSNO team include the following: Director of School Operations, Director of Instructional Quality, School Support Managers, and Director of School Investments.
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Recommended reading from CGCS
To the Editor:Eric Osberg rightly noted in his excellent Education Gadfly editorial ("A byte at the apple," November 20, 2008) that--
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Redneck granola
Since the advent of the “Whole Foods Republican” (Mike Petrilli’s Green Tea Movement—hawkish on spending, dovish on the environment), Whole Foods stores across the land have turned into political battlefields.
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Refinancing education's personnel
Human capital discussions in education nowadays typically start with the problem of “incompetent” teachers and what to do about them.
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Reform waits for no (super)man!
If Waiting for ‘Superman’ has you ready to demolish the education status quo, head to Donewaiting.org to pick up a sledgehammer—or, at least, a pencil with which to sign their petition.
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Register now for the April 9th NCLB Policy Forum!
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, together with the National Center for Education and the Economy and the Progressive Policy Institute, will be holding a policy forum to explore ways to help local, state and federal education officials meet the expectations of the No Child Left Behind Act.
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Reg Weaver: Visionary
This week, Mike and Rick talk new Fordham reports, Baltimore, and résumé-building teachers. John Cronin stops by to talk about The Proficiency Illusion, and Education News of the Weird is under the gun. Click here to listen through our website and peruse past editions.
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Republic of Scarsdale?
It's no new news that Scarsdale, NY has long disdained tests and suffered from an inflated ego on this topic as well. Its latest ploy to distinguish itself from the pack?
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Researchers and data analysts sought by DC
The District of Columbia's State Education Office (SEO) has two openings in its Policy Research and Analysis Division.
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Researchers sought for government think tank on volunteering and the nonprofit sector
The Corporation for National and Community Service, which administers the AmeriCorps service program, VISTA, and other programs, and will work closely with President Bush on the new USA Freedom Corps, is creating an in-house think tank to evaluate its programs and improve research related to volunteering, civic engagement, and the nonprofit sector.
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Rewriting history saves money
In a rare cease-fire in education's long-running war of ideas, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation announced this week that it has reached a negotiated settlement with the major publishers of history textbooks and state textbook adoption agencies.
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Rheejoice! Our savior has come!
Michelle Rhee's recent firing of Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty and the entire workforce of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has not gone without notice. Predictably, the usual suspects have found much about which to complain. "Why is the schools chancellor dismissing Metro employees?