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The next generation
Mopati Morake will graduate shortly from Williams College. He was born in Botswana but finished high school in Hong Kong.
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The problems of education governance in the 21st century
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="250" caption="Click to watch a video of this commentary, as part of Fordham's recent event Are School Boards Vital in the 21st Century?"]
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A sharper focus on education governance
Education ?reforms? abound today, yet the sluggish pace of actual changes wrought by those new policies, programs, and practices demands a fresh look at public education's basic structures and operating arrangements. What America needs in the twenty-first century is a far more fundamental approach to ?re-forming? K-12 education. Our ?marble cake?
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Quotable & notable
?It's not about giving up on public schools but it is about acknowledging that right now, when you step back, [only] 8 percent of low-income kids can expect to get a bachelor's degree by the time they're 24. ...
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Education news nuggets
Great news! There is a new honorable title for schools?a ?Green Ribbon' school.
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Podcast: Education policy: 0; royal wedding: 1
Mike and Janie look into the crystal ball of edu-policy, making predictions on the sustainability of the local school board, potential backlash to reform, and the market's role in education. Amber blows holes in the teacher-quality-gap line of reasoning and Chris gets salty about pepper spray. [powerpress]
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Poverty? Ask J-C Brizard
In a generally positive profile of Jean-Claude Brizard, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel's pick for new Chicago school system chief, the Sun-Times applauds the nominee for ?the charismatic way?
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Charter Schools
A lesson from KIPP
Andrew Rotherham turns in a nice column for Time magazine in which he reports on the findings of a study of the rates of college completion by graduates of the Knowledge is Power Program.
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Quotable & notable
?There is not a single school factor that has more of an effect on student learning than teacher quality. It's more important than shrinking class sizes or building state-of-the-art science labs.''*
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4-26 school boards event
In case you missed it, here is the video of our April 26 event, Are Local School Boards Vital in 21st Century America? It was a great discussion; o
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On the road with ed reformer Jeb Bush
Forgetting for a moment the perhaps unfortunate coinincidence of another Bush governor taking his state education formula national (remember NCLB?), we have a pleasant story in today's Times about former Florida governor Jeb Bush traveling the country talking education.?
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Education news nuggets
While Trump's claims that Obama was a student in Advanced mis-Placement are undeniably sill
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Quotable & notable
?To provide more choice for parents, you need to create more options. ... It shouldn't be limited to just those at the poverty level.''* ?Robert Behning, State Representative, Indiana
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Kohn constructs pedagogical strawman
In his most recent missive (published today in Ed Week), Alfie Kohn decries "the pedagogy of poverty," i.e.: the way many poor children are taught in traditional public and public charter schools around the nation. He complains:
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Education unbound*
Unfortunately, in his Limits of School Reform essay this morning, the newest op-ed columnist for the Times, Joe Nocera, shows the limits of logic in thinking about the subject ? or writing about it.? After throwing up the standard straw men ?
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School boards are dead! Long live school boards!
Though Mike wouldn't allow me anywhere near today's Fordham event, Are Local School Boards Vital in 21st Century America? I will answer the question here: Yes, more so than ever.?
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School boards: A vital debate
The Fordham panel on school boards this afternoon, most of which I caught on the web, was an important one and I recommend it to anyone interested in school governance issues. (We were told that the video should be available on the Fordham website by Thursday).
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Political risk and pensions
We don't often talk about the political risk borne by public-sector workers in traditional pension systems, but that risk is now very real for cops and firefighters in Detroit.
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Education news nuggets
Depending on which ?listening tour' you're tuned into, you might hear about students playing Bridge or the
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Quotable & notable
"There is so much more to being able to teach urban students than certification.''* ?Jeff House, Principal of Achievement First Middle School in Hartford Connecticut
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State CCSS implementation plans: Washington, DC
Winning RTT states got a lot of points for promising to adopt CCSS and implement the standards by adopting some fairly bold reforms. Now the rubber meets the road and it's time to look at whether states are beginning to do what they promised.
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How to run a big city school system: Hang on
In a major profile of the new chancellor of New York City's schools, the Sunday Times headline writer sums up Dennis Walcott nicely: A Schools Chief With a Knack for Conciliation.
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A novel way to think about teacher pay
If you make an infographic colorful enough and confusing enough, people won't pay attention to how absurd your methodology is. That seems to be the theory motivating this chart, posted by Alexander Russo and originally developed by the futurejournalismproject:
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Quotable & notable
"I don't think they should get rid of [standardized tests]. They gotta know how much we're learning.''* ?3rd Grade Student in Boulder County, Colorado
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Ed Next Book Club: John Merrow's The Influence of Teachers
John Merrow has been covering education for more than thirty-five years?first as a reporter for NPR and now as a correspondent for PBS's NewsHo
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Education news nuggets
Well, restraints are certainly needed?a new school shooter video game is available.
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Yawning in Colorado
The Centennial State has a great track record in education reform--bipartisan, even--which is why it was so disappointing to so many people when Colorado didn't win Race to the Top funds last summer, and now it looks like we're going to be disappointed once again.
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Whole Foods Republicans
In honor of Earth Day, I thought I'd bring back an oldie but goodie, from the December 14, 2009 edition of the Wall Street Journal. Whole Foods Republicans
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Quotable & notable
"I see this as the civil rights issue of our generation?the poorest kid, from the toughest community from the most dysfunctional family?can thrive when given a good education?but put that child in school that has a 40, 50 or 60 percent dropout rate?then we as educators, we're perpetuating poverty, we're perpetuating failure.''