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quotable and notable
?There is no content-, value- or business-free education.? ? Jon W. Wiles, retired University of North Florida professor and textbook editor
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Moving beyond adoption
The final drafts of the Common Core State Standards for English language arts and math are slated to be released next week. While there has been some controversy in a handful of states over their adoption, the majority of states seem poised to adopt these standards quickly and with little fanfare.
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'Zona fide
This fall, the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of Arizona’s thirteen-year-old tax credit scholarship program, under which credits (against state taxes) can be taken by those who donate to special “school tuition organizations” (STOs); these orgs then award scholarships for students to attend private schools of their choice.
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Profiting from for-profits
Is there a place for for-profit organizations in public education? If i3 and higher ed are any indication, the Administration rejoinder seems to be no. Gadfly wonders, though, are we being distracted by tax status to the detriment of evaluating quality? Yes, for-profits may be tempted to cut corners to fatten the bottom line.
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Rushing to judgment?
You could be forgiven for thinking that the education messiah will arrive on June 2, considering all the hype, angst, dither and pother that already surround next week’s promised unveiling of the final “common core” state standards (CCSS).
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Unique Schools Serving Unique Students: Charter Schools and Children with Special Needs
Robin Lake, ed. Center on Reinventing Public Education 2010
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Charter School Funding: Inequity Persists
Meaghan Batdorff, Larry Maloney, Jay May, Daniela Doyle, Bryan HasselBall State UniversityMay 2010
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New Fordham report, LeBron, charter scandals, and lots of graphics
Don't miss this week's Ohio Education Gadfly for coverage of all this and more.
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Half of college diplomas are useless?
I just got around to Monday's optimistically-titled NYT article, ?Glimmers of Hope for Grads.? (The web page header is ?Job Prospects Improve Slightly for Graduates? ? maybe that one ended up in the print version). In any event, one of the stats really stuck out to me:
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MD and RTT
Maryland's Race to the Top application fails to garner the support of nearly all of the state's unions and a number of districts, including its largest LEA, Montgomery County.
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quotable and notable
?Without that, it doesn't really matter how much you spend on the car you are likely to crash.? ? Bret Schundler, New Jersey Education Commissioner, on appropriate student data tracking systems
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Can the school-choice genie be put back into the bottle?
Is school choice a genie you can put back into the bottle? The Dayton Public School District wants to try.
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Charter School Funding: Inequity Persists -- a must-read report
From Ball State University comes the latest report, Charter School Funding: Inequity Persists, which measures the extent to which states demonstrate funding fairness toward charter schools.
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Get a jumpstart on college
Ohio offers multiple options for high-school students to earn free college credit, but these pathways remain a mystery to most families and high schoolers. KidsOhio, School Choice Ohio, and the Columbus Urban League have teamed up to produce a simple, informative brochure to help students and their families understand their options for “jumpstarting” their college careers.
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NAEP reading results: Losing LeBron isn't Cleveland's biggest problem
Reading scores for Cleveland’s fourth and eighth graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s (NAEP) Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) aren’t much better than the
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States factor in teachers' performance
Last Saturday, the Columbus Dispatch ran an op-ed by Fordham Institute policy and research analyst Jamie Davies O’Leary about the growing trend of states incorporating teacher performance into evaluations.
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Recent charter school stories clear signal for better accountability
A recent flurry of news about Ohio charter schools makes a strong case for clearer lines of charter school accountability in the Buckeye State.
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New Fordham report: Needles in a Haystack
Nobody is satisfied with the academic performance of the schools serving Ohio's poor, urban youngsters ? and nobody should be. In the 2008-09 school year, almost half of the quarter million students in the state's ?Big 8? cities attended schools rated ?D? or ?F? by the state.
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Charter Funding Still Unfair
There's an important new report out today confirming what Fordham first helped unearth in 2005, and what charter school supporters and leaders have long known: public charters receive less funding than do district schools, by a wide margin
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Thanks for having me
This summer, I'm heading north to Trenton to become the Deputy Commissioner of Education for the state of New Jersey.?Though I'm sad to leave my home state of Maryland and the DC ed reform co
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quotable and notable
?I'm not anti-union; I'm not anti-teacher. I'm anti-our-children-not-getting-a-good-education.? ? Kevin Johnson, Mayor of Sacramento
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States factor in teachers' performance
Here in Ohio, where the state has avoided even some of the least controversial reforms related to teacher evaluation and pay, Emmy and I have noted plenty of other districts and states taking bold action. ?We wrote an op-ed about this very topic, highlighting four such examples: D.C.
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education news nuggets
At the college level, transparency may not always be a good thing. At the national level, there are 10 problems edu-preneurs must solve.
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Massachusetts madness
If you wanted to dream up an example of the ill consequence of ?one size fits all? federal policy, you'd be hard pressed to do better than Arne Duncan and company's treatment of Massachusetts right now.