Education news nuggets

Here's to hoping we can learn from other countries at the world education summit next week. Not only are more foreign-born men and women leading U.S.

School funding: Do we have to be as poor as our neighbor?

In a provocative new school funding case, a federal court judge in Kansas City ruled against parents from the suburban Shawnee Mission school district who had wanted to increase property taxes above the state mandated limit

The $125,000 Teacher: Why Not!

Don't miss Katie Couric's 60 Minutes report this Sunday on a New York City charter school that pays teachers lots of money but gives them no tenure.

Stop seeking curricular solutions to instructional problems

There continues to be a lot of discussion around the idea of creating a ?common? curriculum to supplement the Common Core State Standards. Robert Pondiscio over at Core Knowledge applauds the move, arguing that, while the CCSS are ?praiseworthy,?

Quotable & notable

?It's not enough to teach kids how to "read hard stuff." You have to show them how reading hard stuff in AP Literature is different than reading hard stuff in biology, European history, or trigonometry.'' * -Catherine Gewertz, Writer for Education Week

Education news nuggets

Even if you can spell i-o-n-i-z-e, you might be attending a high school that is failing under NCLB.

Duncan says 82 percent of schools are failing

So what else is new?? Isn't this just the statistic that confirms the message of Nation at Risk or the flat NAEP scores for the last forty years?

PODCAST: Mike throws rock, Rick throws paper

Mike and Rick get a verbal boxing wo

Chris Irvine's What's Up With That? The ultimate game of rock, paper, scissors

Quotable & notable

?Taking on the status quo is no easy task.'' * -Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin

Education news nuggets

Dogs, horses & Iguanas. Oh My!

The rebirth of the education governor

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We Feel Your Pain -- and Other Good Stories from the Times

The New York Times is on a roll with its education coverage, today reporting on everything from Obama in Boston to Rick Scott in Florida and rich schools in Bronxville.?

Looking two steps ahead

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The case for paying most teachers the same

I know it's an article of faith in the school-reform community that we should "differentiate" among teachers and pay them "differentially" too.

Quotable & notable

?[Common academic standards] will end the practice of lying to children and adults that dummied down standards will prepare students for success" * -Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education

Education news nuggets

What is the world coming to?

Education news nuggets

Food Fight! End Result: Hairnets- Yes, Fried food- no!

A Times torrent on teachers

It is encouraging to see the New York Times continue its blanket coverage of education issues and events, even if the nation's putative paper of record sometimes misses the mark (see my Inside the Bubble) and even though it insists on giving reform nemesis Michael Winerip full rein.

Retirement status quo hurts most teachers

Take a look at this graph from Robert Costrell and Mike Podgursky's new report on pensions for the TIAA-CREF Institute:

Get yer intellectual cotton candy here!

I don't relish piling on, but David Brooks's column today, ?The New Humanism,? timed to coincide with the release of his new book The Social Animal, is intellectual cotton candy. ?Over the course of my career,? he begins, ?I've covered a number of policy failures.?

Hey schools: Don't charge extra for extra-curriculars

Of the many dumb ways to close budget holes, perhaps the one most worthy of the title "self-inflicted wound" is the move to reduce the number of extra-curricular activities offered to students (or to pass along the costs to families in the form of fees).

Quotable & notable

?I just can't prioritize making teachers' work environments fair, interesting, or pleasant for them--not if there's any potential conflict with the goal of providing the best possible education for kids.'' *

Checker Finn: quotemeister supreme!

We all know that Checker Finn?has an uncanny?ability to turn a phrase and get right to the heart of the matter. Well, here are a few (very) noteworthy Finn quotes from recent news stories.

States should focus on assessments, not curriculum

Today, education leaders from across the nation (including our own Checker Finn) came together to endorse the idea of creating a national, voluntary, common curriculum that would be designed to supplement the national, voluntary, Common Core ELA and math standards.

Inside the bubble

Reading yesterday's New York Times editorial about the Empire State's fiscal crisis, I couldn't ?help but think of the last days of the USSR. I'm sure there were many Soviets scrambling to move the deck chairs around while that?ship was sinking.

Engaging kids in the ongoing experiment

Almost fifteen years ago, I was sitting in the main auditorium at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, getting ready to start my sophomore year at a public, residential magnet school that billed itself as a "pioneering educational community." What I remember most is how much the dean of students talked about the possibility of failure during that or

The ongoing experiment

In the new Washington Monthly Steven M. Teles, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins, reviews Frederick M. Hess's recently published book The Same Thing Over and Over. Teles is particularly attentive to ?Hess's argument?

Brookses on colleges

Columnist David Brooks has a new New York Times blog that, he writes, will ?be about who you are and why you do what you do.? His description is not a promising start.

Arts education on the ropes

Last week, the National Endowment of the Arts released a new analysis showing a sharp decline in participation in arts education nationwide, with particularly bad news for African-Americans and Hispanics.