Quotable & notable

"We know now from research that a lot of kids that drop out in high school really drop out in middle school. They just leave in high school"* - Laura Bush, Former First Lady

On Purpose' book event

Mark your calendars for a book event coming up next week. On Wednesday, February 16?there will be?a cocktail reception and book signing for Samuel Casey Carter's book, On Purpose: How Great School Cultures Form Strong Character.

Event Recap: Are Bad Schools Immortal?

In case you missed it?..On February 2 -- Groundhog Day -- we held a terrific (& quite lively) event to discuss the seemingly eternal problem of low-performing schools and what to do about them. We tied it loosely to the cult classic movie Groundhog Day, in which the main character lives the same day over and over.

Education news nuggets

Watch out. The Common Core State Standards are a Death Knell for literature.? Extreme? Probably.

Education news nuggets

Well, let's talk about a sobering effect?not only do we have to worry about increased teen pregnancy and children in poverty as well as

You think you're ready for college???think again

In?their continuing drive to ratchet up learning standards, New York State's education leaders?are now sounding the alarm?about high school diplomas. According to a new study, done for NY's State Ed department, fewer than half the kids in the state holding a diploma are ready for college.

Abjure the core

Doug Lasken, writing on FlashReport, says it will cost California $1.6 billion to replace its current educational standards with the newly developed Common Core standards being pushed by President Obama. Lasken writes:

Rank

Malcolm Gladwell takes apart the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. He clarifies the obvious: that the U.S. News rankings are self-fulfilling; the magazine's metrics prize prestige and its top-rated schools are the most prestigious.

Quotable & notable

"The thing we said then, in looking at the business world, is that if you sit on [New York school data], you become the Enron of test scores, the Enron of graduation rates."* - Merryl H. Tisch, Chancellor of the Board of Regents

Chris Irvine's What's Up With That? Robo-call you later

Thoughts on diversity

Justin Cohen, a panelist at Fordham's recent Are Bad Schools Immortal? event, said that nobody should oppose, and nobody he knows opposes, engineering public schools' student bodies to be more racially varied.* But is the first part, the ?should? part, true?

New blog design

We've undergone a facelift overnight but we're having some technical difficulties. You may see some older posts showing up among the new ones but, pardon our dust, we're looking to get that straightened out as soon as possible. As always, thank you for reading Flypaper!

Merit pay? Not so fast!

A new study released by Education Next will cool some jets among proponents of performance-based pay for teachers.?

Duncan to Atlanta board: Grow up!

?I'm not sure if Atlanta school board members were included in Rick Hess's latest survey of school boards, but if they were, let's hope they aren't representative.??

Superintendents to the woodshed!

New York hates to be behind its Hudson River rival ? New Jersey ? but new Empire State Governor Andrew Cuomo is doing a nice job keeping up with his Garden State comrade-in-chief Chris Christie with education blasts.?

Unsung examples from international education

We've got a fantastic coffee mug at the Fordham office, gifted to us by the kind folks over at the Schwab Foundation. On it is printed a single cartoon image, two boys standing outside a classroom holding white pieces of paper. The caption on the bottom of the picture says: ?Big deal, an A in math. That would be a D in any other country.?

Money matters

Selective public high schools in DC, educating mostly affluent students, receive more dollars per pupil than open enrollment neighborhood schools.

Tweet all about it

Did you miss our event -- Are Bad Schools Immortal? -- last week? Want a recap? Check out the Twitter feed below for some play-by-play action.

Quotable & notable

"America, not just Wake County, should stand up and say this is wrong and we're not going back to the days of segregated schools."* Rev. William J. Barber, President of North Carolina chapter of NAACP

Education news nuggets

Beware?Plastic Pellots may whiz by you in your dating violence course.

Nobody deserves tenure

Nobody deserves tenure, with the possible exception of federal judges. University professors don't deserve tenure; civil servants don't deserve tenure; police and firefighters don't deserve tenure; school teachers don't deserve tenure.

Let the budget battle begin: New York style

New York's new governor, Andrew Cuomo, unveiled his proposed state budget yesterday and, as expected, it's not pretty.

Kumbaya? Not quite yet in Gotham

It must have been quite an event, last night's storm-tossed public meeting of New York City's Panel for Education Policy, a Bloomberg created group that makes recommendations to the mayor on key education issues.?According to Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools

Kumbaya ? not quite yet in Gotham

It must have been quite an event, last night's storm-tossed public meeting of New York City's Panel for Education Policy, a Bloomberg created group that makes recommendations to the mayor on key education issues.?According to Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools

Reinventing the Empire State

As Peter noted earlier, we're witnessing something rare in New York right now ?

Reinventing the Empire State

As Peter noted earlier, we're witnessing something rare in New York right now ?

Time for change

Harvard's Graduate School of Education released today?a report, Pathways to Prosperity, which, to judge by the heft of those who contributed to the document's ?Advance Praise?

Thoughts on desegregation

The first one is that the terms need changing. When we speak today of school ?desegregation?

LIVE Webcast: Are Bad Schools Immortal?

If you've been affected by the weather today, please join the Fordham Institute online today at 3:30pm for a a lively and provocative debate about our latest report, Are Bad Schools Imm

Quotable & notable

?What the Chinese are very good at doing is achieving short-term goals. They're good at copying things, not creating them'' * ?Jiang Xueqin, Deputy Principal of Peking University High School