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Commentary
Curriculum & Instruction
Do high flyers maintain their altitude?
If America is to remain internationally competitive, we need to maximize the potential of our top students. Over the last decade, however, federal and state education-accountability systems?particularly in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001?have placed primary emphasis on moving low-performing students toward proficiency.
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Curriculum & Instruction, Advanced Education
Distressing but not surprising
We asked a few experts to weigh in on our new study, "Do High Flyers Maintain Their Performance: Performance Trends of Top Students," as part of an online forum we'll be hosting on Flypaper over the next couple days.
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Quotable & notable
?I want to stress this. All these ideas came from the 'hood'?. We're advocating for our children, the same as in well-to-do neighborhoods.?* ?Woodcrest Elementary School parent
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Curriculum & Instruction
Teachers Breaking Out of the Box
I gave up bashing teachers years ago, when I realized that, as with soldiers in the trenches, they had their hands full just staying alive.
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Guest Post: SBAC Math Specifications Don't Add Up
On August 29, 2011, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) released its draft of ?Content Specifications with Content Mapping for the Summative assessment of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics? (henceforth, Draft).?
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Quotable & notable
?It's Florida's prerogative to apply for the grant. You can't fault a state in the current fiscal crisis for wanting to get Race to the Top dollars.?* ?Amber Winkler, Research Director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
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Quotable & notable
?Where you have great performance, you have great principals, period, full stop. Where you have low performance, you have struggling principals. It's not that complicated.'' * ? Cami Anderson, Newark Schools Superintendent
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Education Next Book Club Podcast: Peg Tyre's The Good School
In the introduction to her new book, Peg Tyre quotes a Dad frustrated by the process of choosing a school. ?It's absurd. When you purchase a house, you get an inspector's report. When you buy a sports car, at least you get to check under the hood.
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Gentrification Generation staying home?
A new generation of affluent, educated, urban Americans is beginning to send its children to school.? Their dissatisfaction with the lack of choice and the status quo of failure in urban education will be far more personal than their elders'?and it represents a golden opportunity for choice advocates able to mobilize these parents.
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Quotable & notable
?Regular working folks don't have tenure. Why should bad teachers?'' * ? Lane Wright, Press Secretary for Florida Governor Rick Scott
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Republicans for Education Reform
For months?no, years?the ESEA discussion has been nothing short of maddening. While many pundits decry the lack of a ?clear route to reauthorization,? an obvious bipartisan solution has been sitting there, ready for the picking.
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PODCAST: Amber meets the shoe bomber
Before embarking on a moral crusade, Mike and Rick laugh in the face of ESEA reauth and downplay the statistical importance of the SAT. Amber makes Third Way's new report look silly and Chris applies for medical stress leave. [powerpress]
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Quotable & notable
?It is no secret that charter schools are having to deal with the idea that there is a selection process which would seem to prevent the kids who need it most from getting into the schools.'' * ?Gregory Morris, Children's Aid Society staff member
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Joint Fordham-AEI book a finalist for award
Stretching the School Dollar: How districts and schools can save money while serving schools best (Harvard University Press, 2010), edited
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Zen and the art of school board maintenance
We were about half-way through our four-hour school board ?Governance Team Retreat? when I saw an opening.? ?The facilitator, sent to us by the New York State School Boards Association (for a nice fee), had handed out a 27-page document that covered the standard ?roles and responsibilities? of...
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Quotable & notable
?Bullying doesn't stop at 3 o'clock, and neither should a school's authority.'' * ?Valerie Vainieri Huttle, Assemblywoman from New Jersey
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New to Twitter? Start here
Do you have a voracious appetite for education policy news and views? Do you need to stay abreast of the latest school reform debates? Do you want to have access to breaking news, as soon as it's reported? Are you always looking for new ways to waste time? Then Twitter is for you!
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Quotable & notable
?Although Hyde-Bronx is located in the significantly disadvantaged Hunts Point neighborhood, the school believes that students need to feel respected and responsible.? *
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Obama calls for more school stimulus
Last night, in his speech before Congress, the President called for another round of stimulus spending, including $25 billion for school modernization and $35 billion for what the Administration calls "teacher rehiring," i.e., calling teachers back from layoffs pending for budget reasons.
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Quotable & notable
?While they're adding teachers in places like South Korea, we're laying them off in droves. It's unfair to our kids.? * ? Barack Obama, President of the United States of America
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You can't make this stuff up: Don't write anything down.
I was paging through a July issue of the New York State School Boards Association newspaper, On Board, and spotted an interesting comment from a superintendent, in a story by Lynne Lenhardt, Area 7 Director (has nothing to do with UFOs), who had sent
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Education news nuggets
I wonder if the College of William and Mary hired Robert Gates because he is the only muggle that can drive a