I had the honor of appearing on the Diane Rehm Show this morning, along with D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, Lisa Graham Keegan of the McCain campaign, Melody Barnes of the Obama campaign, Greg Toppo of USA Today, and Rick Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation.
My post about Obama surrogate Melody Barnes's embrace of student portfolios is causing concern within the edusphere.
Martin West and Ludger Woessmann have published a fascinating study in the winter edition of Education Next. Its conclusion--that there is a positive correlation between the prevalence of private schools and high test scores--is something that is widely argued but not so widely proven.
Last Thursday, the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program unveiled a new paper by Sara Mead and Andrew Rotherham, Changing the Game: The Federal Role in Supporting 21st Century Educational Innovation .
William Ayers may be getting a lot of attention these days, but the real education radical to keep your eye on is D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee .
Sol Stern describes Bill Ayers thusly: "[A]s one of the leaders of a movement for bringing social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer." Hard to argue with that.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the cram industry in India and asked a simple question: what will it take to get American students to start respecting education again?
According to Joel Klein, former Wall Street execs have another option: the classroom. Guess, we'll have to wait and see math teacher alternative certification programs are overwhelmed with??Gordon Gekkos.
...is stupendous. I know we say this every week, but that's because we tend to routinely out-do ourselves. This week is no exception.
As Campaign K-12 reports, last night's presidential debate was a bonanza for education. The candidates mentioned the word 21 times--which would look particularly impressive were it not for Joe the Plumber's 26 citations.
McCain claimed so last night, Obama disagreed, and now Fast Company's blog gets to the bottom of it (taking the analysis a step further than Marc Fisher in the
Mikyung RyuAmerican Council on EducationOctober 2008
Oceans of ink and big chunks of cyberspace and the radio spectrum will be consumed, starting a few weeks hence, by speculation about who will or should or mustn't occupy key roles in the Presidential administration of John McCain or Barack Obama.
Everyone knows that this year's is a "change" election, and everyone also knows that our education system could benefit from some real change, too. I vote for reinserting history and related subjects back into the curriculum.
It's no military step routine for sure, but the recent federal suit filed by the New York City United Federation of Teachers is certainly out of step. At issue is a city policy that makes political buttons and signs verboten in schools.
Here's a riddle. You're the Secretary of Education. A deeply unpopular law is starting to label even good schools as failures. What do you do? Think positive! "Pretty much every organization needs improvement," Margaret Spellings told the New York Times this week. That's certainly true as far as it goes; even Gadfly tries to muscle-up his wings from time to time.
As the Holy Rabbi would say, it could always be worse. While Bob Schieffer told the nation last night that our education system trails "most of the countries of the world," surely he didn't have Mexico in mind.
Dan Lips and Matthew LadnerGoldwater InstituteSeptember 2008
Extra chores, withheld desserts, and grounding may be going the way of poodle skirts and cherry coke floats if the latest installments in the Nebraska safe-haven law saga are any indication.
Wide-ranging presentations and lively discussion today at the AEI/Fordham conference on judicial involvement in education!
...I will. It's a safe bet that education won't be a big part of tonight's presidential debate, so if you need to ponder what an McCain or Obama administration should or could do, two NY Times blog entries from earlier this week have some interesting thoughts.
Ok, Eric caught me. I used the Washington Post-ABC News poll just to poke fun at??Ed in '08 again. With our current situation, someone would have to be off their rocker to list education as their top priority over the gazillion other things that are plaguing this country and the world.
I admire Stafford's passion, in joining Mike's anti-Ed-in-???08 crusade, but I think she puts way too much stock in the
"Bush: Partial Nationalization Not An Abandonment of Free Market"
Conventional wisdom in Washington, circa 2001, was that states and schools were not to be trusted. Give them an inch, they'll take a mile--that was the sentiment when it came to devising NCLB's accountability system. We all knew that devious states would try to game the system and make schools look better than they really were, and that schools themselves would find loopholes and abuse them.
Two weeks ago, I had a bit of fun at Ed in 08's expense. One of our readers accused me of unfairly picking on the poor initiative (get it?). Well, we could feel sorry for Ed in 08???
Let's assume for a moment that the current trajectory of the presidential election remains the same and Obama wins by a significant margin, maybe even a landslide.
