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Like batting averages? You'll love VAM
Review: Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value-Added
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Education News Nuggets
Teacher training is all about the technology lately?coaching via earpieces and
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Sputnik for the 21st century
This piece originally appeared in today's Wall Street Journal (login required).
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Taking off the gloves
By happenstance, the same day that Michelle Rhee announced formation of her new education-reform advocacy group, Students First, a committee of our own board okayed a staff (and attorney)?recommendation that we engage in what the IRS calls a ?501 (h)?
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The war is implied
Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute tells the Christian Science Monitor that former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee ?very explicitly is setting out to be a political answer to the unions.?
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Try again
Edward L. Glaeser, a Harvard economics professor, presents today on the New York Times Economix blog some ways in which Republicans in Washington might improve education. Alas, his ideas are not new.
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Behind the numbers
Checker is among those educators ?stunned,? as he told the New York Times, by China's performance in what the Times noted was the nation's ?debut in international standardized testing.? And stunned he, and we all, should be.
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Quotable & Notable
?We are trying to shift the balance of power in the education landscape away from the powerful groups who want to keep the status quo. We are going to be the group that is advocating on behalf of kids.? Michelle Rhee, Former Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools
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Education News Nuggets
Want to learn how to improve children's lives? It's more than just fixing schools. And if you're not already busy this weekend, maybe it's time to get buzzy.
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The Brighter Side of IT: Figment.Com
That's the name of the new website for literate and literary teens being unveiled by New Yorker staff writer Dana Goodyear and former New Yorker managing editor Jacob Lewis.? (This, according to this morning's Times.)
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Context matters, but so does getting the fundamentals right
Review: How the World's Most Improved Systems Keep Getting Better
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Dayton Urban League ceases operations after 63 years
Dayton is the Fordham Institute's hometown. Thomas B. Fordham made his fortune here and he and his wife are buried in the city's Woodland Cemetery.
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Quotable & Notable
?The debate shouldn't be about whether a school is a traditional or charter public school.? It should be about whether it's high-performing, period.'' * -Joel Klein, Outgoing Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education
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Event highlights: Are Education Schools Amenable to Reform?
Well, we held yet another interesting and valuable event here at Fordham on December 2.? The topic at hand was a crucial one: Are Education Schools Amenable to Reform?
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The dark side of IT: Cyberbullying coming to a school near you
I might not have appreciated today's front-page Times story about cyberbullying if I hadn't received a?barrage of text messages this morning from a school aide?mad?at me?she said she was ?too enraged? to call?for a newspaper story I was quoted in.?
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Special education, back in the spotlight
The special-education system has long been a thicket of politics, social obligations, massive spending, and (mis)diagnoses.
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Smile! You're on Not-so-Candid Camera
Sam Dillon? tackles the question of teacher evaluations in the Times today with a front-page ?story pegged to Bill Gates' investment of $335 million in overhauling teacher evaluation systems.
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The great compromise of 2010
High drama in NYC: Cathie Black got her waiver from State Commissioner David Steiner on the condition that she team up with Shael Polakow-Suransky. Wait, who? Black's new number two is a former Gotham teacher and principal currently employed by the NYC Department of Education's central office, as well as an alum of the Broad Superintendents Academy.
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Education News Nuggets
There is no need for high school seniors to despair, for while tough economic times make fewer traditional scholarship dollars available, there are some new unconventional scholarship opportunities popping up: via
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School Fights: Who's In Charge?
Another YouTube video making the rounds shows a furious fistfight between two Florida middle schoolers ? taken, of course, by a fellow student with cellphone.
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Field notes: Minding your peas & chicken nuggets
While Michelle Obama was celebrating the House vote on the $4.5 billion school lunch bill yesterday, I was having a power lunch with a couple of 3rd graders at my local intermediate school.
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Re-imaginging local control
Writing earlier this week in the Wall Street Journal, my friend and long-time former co-author, Diane Ravitch, challenged resurgent Congressional Republicans to return K-12 education to ?local control?
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Heading south?
Who, after all, can resist that sunshine and all those casual, wavy palm trees? Not Michelle Rhee, it seems.
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To infinity, and beyond!
Over the past decade, digital learning at the K-12 level has exploded?from a national enrollment of?40,000-50,000 in 2000 to an estimated 3 million in 2010. And this trend line is sure to get steeper, way steeper, in coming years.
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Quotable & Notable
?And we must all accept that [school] choice is part of securing the civil right of high-quality education.? * RiShawn Biddle, Editor, Dropout Nation
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Hudson Institute Event (happening now!)
Fordham's Chester Finn will be speaking today at a Hudson Institute event, entitled, The 112th Congress and
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Education News Nuggets
Here's an update on a few new initiatives to boost student achievement, some innovative, some contentious: high-tech school buses, kindergarten literac
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Special education, 35 years later
It was thirty-five years ago that President Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (later renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). This was a watershed moment in American society, as it made our public schools accessible to children who had been shut out (or shut into dark corners of school basements) for too long.
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Unbecoming
It took two months for the New York City Education Department to fire Melissa Petro, a Bronx elementary school teacher who had written a Huffington Post article and sundry blog posts about her sexually adventurous past, including some time spent?shedding her clothing at a club in Mexico and her stin