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It's the states, stupid
Last week I made the fairly obvious argument that GOP governors are the key to the Republican Party's renewal, including on the education issue.
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Joel Klein, my personal stalker
"I suppose we'd been warned, weeks ago, that the New York City Department of Education was watching us.
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Linda Darling-Hammond bows out
As first reported by Politics K-12 yesterday, Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond has decided to return to Palo Alto rather than seek a top position in the Obama Administration.
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Maybe there's no "teacher quality gap" after all
It’s taken as an article of faith in the education reform community: we’re screwing poor kids by giving them less effective teachers than their more affluent peers enjoy. The evidence seems pretty much open-and-shut.
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New NCES analysis: Big declines at the top during the NCLB era
A new analysis of U.S. performance on the international PISA exam in mathematics shows significant declines for students at the top and middle of the achievement distribution from 2003 to 2006.* This is the strongest evidence to date that the performance of America’s highest-achieving students dropped during the early years of No Child Left Behind’s implementation.
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Obama endorses education industry's goal to rein in costs
From the Washington Post: "In his quest to transform American education, President Obama appeared yesterday to put his faith in pledges from some of the interest groups that helped scuttle reform in years past, but the industry's promises fell well short of the White House's expansive claims."...Oh wait, just kidding...Read it
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On scaling-up and turning-around
There's a lot of buzz in the policy community right now around scaling up high-performing charter schools and turning around low-performing public schools.
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Our limits on school choice are better than your limits on school choice
In the brouhaha over last week’s UCLA Civil Rights Project report on charter school “segregation,” one talking point seems unimpeachab
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OutMATCHed
"This over-the-top, the sky-is-falling article from the Boston Globe is yet more evidence that the concept of 'standards' has taken a beating in public discourse. At issue is the MATCH public charter school, one of the nation's best, according to Newsweek...." Read it here.
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Pity the $30,000 a year teacher
"You know, it's tough to ask a teacher who's making $30,000 or $35,000 a year to tighten her belt when people who are making much more than her (sic) are living pretty high on the hog." --Senator Barack Obama, October 7th presidential debate.
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President Bush left behind
There's a lot of talk about bipartisanship right now, what with the stimulus bill making its way through Congress and President Obama obviously yearning for Republican support.
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"Proficiency" Pollyanas
The No Child Left Behind hard-liners are striking back at President Obama’s call to move beyond the goal of getting 100 percent of American students to “proficiency” by 2014, and working instead to get most students “college and career-ready” by the time they graduate. Sandy Kress
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Race, class, and charter schools
Earlier this month, the Institute of Education Sciences released a major charter school study…But an important caveat…got mostly overlooked: charters serving lots of poor or low-performing kids made a significant positive impact on math achievement, while “middle class” charter schools had a negative
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Rhee's moment in TIME
It's hard not to root for Michelle Rhee, the butt-kicking, straight-talking, no-nonsense Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
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Scalpel, meet ineffective federal programs
In the debate Friday night, Barack Obama responded to John McCain's idea of freezing federal spending by arguing that "the problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel." Then, on Face th
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Send Obama back to Denver
Candidate Obama gave one heckuva speech in the Mile High City once upon a time; ask him to deliver another one as President Obama this coming June.
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Senioritis
As a few smart guys predicted fifteen months ago, the budget crisis is putting serious pressure on teacher seniority as a
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Sol Stern: Mayor Bloomberg shouldn't get to grade himself
"Sol Stern offers a wise suggestion in this City Journal Online piece: create an independent agency in New York to verify student achievement results...." Read it here.
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Sol Stern's latest target: Russ Whitehurst
"Now that Sol Stern has completely ruffled the feathers of the 'whatever works' crowd, he's turned his sights to one of the most visible leaders of the 'what works' movement, Institute for Educational Sciences director Russ Whitehurst...." Read it here.
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Sotomayor and the schools
President Obama has selected federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court. Education Week's School Law blog has a nice quick summary of her background.
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Teacher, can you spare a dime?
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did the country a big favor yesterday by announcing his intention to freeze the salaries of all of his teachers and administrators–and in one fell swoop eliminate the need to lay off any instructors.
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The 100th day
President Barack Obama's "first 100 days" come to an end today, as you may have noticed from the barrage of fawning press coverage (not all of it on the editorial
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The National Conference of State Legislators-Who-Also-Happen-To-Be-Classroom-Teachers-and-NEA-Members
I'm currently on the Amtrak back from Philly, where I spoke before the education committee of the National Conference of State Legislatures. I decided to be provocative, purposely trying to raise their blood pressure a bit. And I knew my talk wouldn't be popular. But you know the old adage about knowing your audience?
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The Obama education strategy: Hire the reformers, bail out the states, buy off the unions
That's what it's starting to look like, at least if the rumors swirling around Washington have any merit.
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The Obamas' visit to a charter school: Red Hot!
Get out that trusty Reform-o-Meter because Team Obama is finally showing some heat.
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The problem with "school boards are the problem"
For two weeks now I’ve been meaning to write about this provocative Washington Post column by Montgomery County (MD) school board member Laura Berthiaume.
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Community development corporation needs finance director
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a New York City community development group, seeks a director to get its new Educational Facilities Finance Center off the ground. Duties include public policy work, project financing, training, consulting, fundraising and management. Candidates should be self-starters with expertise in education policy and financing; master's degree preferred.
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Competition, the universal motivator
We’ve been covering the Los Angeles school-outsourcing plan for a while and it’s no surprise that teachers are among the groups vying for control of various schools.
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Concessions
This week, Mike and NCTQ President Kate Walsh chat about Obama, Edwards, and Bloomberg. Kate tells us all about her organization's recently released Yearbook, and Education News of the Weird is a Turkish delight.