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Duncan's speech
I just finished finished reading Secretary Duncan's speech on the future of ESEA/NCLB. Checker already weighed in here, but let me add a couple other thoughts.
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Catholic-charter conversions
My case study on the charter conversion of seven Washington, DC Catholic schools was just released by Seton Education Partners. If you're at all interested in urban charters, CMOs, Catholic schools, or the crisis of faith-based inner-city education, you might want to check it out.
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An exercise in bureaucratic redundancy
A bill introduced by Ohio State Representatives Hite and Dubois would make it official state
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Conversions vs. turnarounds
I just returned from potentially one of the most portentous conferences in recent memory. If I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, we may soon see big changes in the urban education landscape with major implications for tens of thousands of low-income students, charter schooling, choice, and Catholic education.
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Did you just double dip that chip?
Talk about an entrepreneurial spirit! As if one salary were not enough in tough economic times, Raquel Downing is pulling two--by running a side business from her seat in one of New York City’s notorious “rubber rooms.” Seems Ms.
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Mass unionization
The first Massachusetts charter school to unionize (nearly a year ago) now has a collectively-bargained contract with its teachers. Charters in other jurisdictions have unionized, so what’s so special about this one?
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Backlash to the backlash
Fifteen years after the fall of apartheid, South African schools are flatly failing as vehicles of social mobility; many black schools are plagued by teacher absenteeism (despite the highest teacher unionization rate in the world), scant accountability, even less authority in the hands of principals, and achievement scores that rank below poorer African peers.
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Walk the line
Every day, hundreds of backpack-toting children cross the Lake Amistad Dam Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. This wouldn't normally be cause for complaint except that the bridge spans the U.S.-Mexico border and many of the children crossing that line are likely attending American public schools without student visas. Plenty of such crossings are legal--students and parents who’re U.S.
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When failing no one is failing everyone
What's the point of having standards if they're so low that everybody meets them? That’s the Q in Maryland this week following the announcement that only 11 of 62,000 students were denied graduation as a result of failing the state graduation exam (despite its many alternatives, loopholes, and escape clauses).
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Early childhood misstep
While the Senate is consumed by health care, other problem topics are piling up. A recent arrival on its docket is the "Early Learning Challenge Fund," a complex federal pre-school collage, passed last week by the House with several worthy features but more than a little bad stuff.
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The Providence Effect: The Amazing Story of An Inner City School
Rollin Binzer, directorDinosaurs of the Future ProductionsSeptember 25, 2009
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How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement
Caroline M. Hoxby, Sonali Murarka, and Jenny KangNew York City Charter Schools Evaluation ProjectSeptember 2009
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How It's Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools
Karin ChenowethHarvard Education PressSeptember 2009
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Writing and formula bottles
This article over at Education.com about the state of writing caught my eye.
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Hoxby on NYC charters
The NYT reports this morning on Stanford Professor Caroline Hoxby's latest findings on the Big Apple's charters. The results are extremely encouraging. Here are two blurbs:
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More on the Common Core draft standards...
Here is a Washington Post article this morning about the draft standards for English and math that were made public yesterday. From the piece:
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Today's Quotable & Notable
Quotable : ???To me it is the best thing they could have come up with. It's like I'm sending my kids to a private school and the county's paying for it.??? ??? Raquel Pelaez, parent of two students enrolled in Florida's Broward Virtual School
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Education theorists are great forgetters'
John Derbyshire is no optimist... that is when it comes to education policy. In an excerpt from his soon-to-be-released??We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, he explains how education policy has nothing new under the sun. One particular common theme?
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House Ed & Labor Republicans comment on the common core draft
Here is the take of the House Education & Labor Committee GOP staff on the common core draft standards for English-language arts and math.
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Fordham comments on the Common Core State Standards
The public draft of the Common Core State Standards is considerably improved from the version that was circulated two months back and it's evident that the drafters are trying to incorporate responsible feedback. I trust they will continue to.
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Remembering Irving Kristol
So much that's true--and important--has been written about the late Irving Kristol, I can add but a few recollections.
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From Schoolhouse to Courthouse - an interview
To learn more about the new book, "From Schoolhouse to Courthouse," here's an interview??(podcast) with its co-editor, Joshua Dunn of the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs.
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Today's "Quotable & Notable"
Quotable: "When we tell kids they ought to go to universities who shouldn't, we set them up for failure.?? We need to get more young people in skills training to get them capacity to be successful early in life." - Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour
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Stopping by a Workgroup on a Rainy Morning
I gave a presentation this morning to some state- and district-level education leaders working on a state committee charged with addressing persistently low-performing schools. They asked a number of thought-provoking questions and made several insightful, real-world implementation comments that are typically missing in the 30,000-foot DC policy debate.
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Health Care and an Educated Citizenry
Is there a connection between the raging health care debate and education in America today? You bet, argues Checker in this piece on NRO (which also will run in our weekly Gadfly newsletter).
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Harkin back to yesteryear
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) has replaced the late Ted Kennedy as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Many interest groups are ecstatic, many school reformers wary, seeing Harkin as an old-style Democrat who opposes charter schools and merit pay and works on behalf of the establishment. But there could be a silver lining.
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Health care and an educated citizenry
What kind of education would one need to make sense of the current health-care debate? As America rethinks its academic standards and international competitiveness, this is not a bad time to ask what U.S.
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Historically deficient
Who were Julius Caesar, Leif Ericsson, and Charles Darwin? Know the answer? Well that’s because you, dear reader, are not a recent or current product of British schools—state, independent, or otherwise--where the Romans, Vikings, and Victorians, amongst others, can be skipped in history class so that students have time to learn how to use social networking sites like Twitter.