In 2006, we wailed when the Florida Supreme Court, on which sit perhaps some of the most left-leaning people in Tallahassee, summoned up dubious reasoning to strike down the state's Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provided vouchers to students to escape their failing schools for better educational opportuniti
Ocean's 11 has come to Fairfax County, Virginia. Its school district estimates that during the 2007-2008 school year, $1.2 million of cafeteria food was pilfered from under the watchful eyes of the lunch ladies.
Survivor and The Real World attract millions of viewers, but the reality TV cognoscenti know where to find the most delicious fare: the televised actions of elected political bodies (see here and here).
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is in the midst of a 12-city "Conversation on Education" that he says will inform his long-awaited education plan, currently expected in early 2009. I attended his invitation-only event in Dayton, and the governor came across as charming, caring, even grandfatherly. He was patient with everyone and showed a real sense of humor.
A Boston Globe op-ed tells us that, long before he was governor of Massachusetts, the young Deval Patrick "earned a scholarship from A Better Chance, an organization that provides educational opportunities to young people of color." That scholarship transported him from Chicago's South Side to Boston's Milton Academy and eventually through the fabled iron gates of Harvard Yard.
The Voice of San Diego, ??a local independent paper, examines the ongoing deliberations over a new teachers union contra
The NCLB conversation has gone digital--at NewTalk.Org, a fancy shmancy blog that allows big thinkers to "talk" via posting for a set time period.
I have to admit that I had been hoping for a while someone would do this. A new advocacy group founded this past spring, Strong Schools DC , has fomented a grassroots revolution and the D.C.
The Gadfly briefly addressed this issue a few weeks ago and the editors at Newsday have taken it up in
The state's new round of local report cards detailing last year's performance for Ohio public schools won't be made public until the last week of August, but district school officials are already scrambling to discredit the reports.
An Ohio State University sociology professor says the state's new value-added method for measuring student academic progress is an improvement to the accountability system but still doesn't go far enough.
Black males trail white males in high-school graduation by an average of 28 percent nationally and in Ohio by 30 percent, according to a new report from the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
State Board of Education member Colleen Grady comments on Emmy L. Partin's recent piece concerning a board recommendation that school districts be allowed to create so-called innovation schools. Essentially, these would be copies of charter schools, which districts are already allowed to sponsor.
Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is in the midst of a 12-city "Conversation on Education" that he says will inform his long-awaited education plan, currently expected in early 2009. I attended his invitation-only event in Dayton and the governor came across as charming, caring, even grandfatherly. He was patient with everyone and showed a real sense of humor.
Far too often, educational policymakers have high demands and expectations for students but roll the dice on the skills and competence of instructors and school administrators. While we might like to believe that charter schools rarely, if ever, sin like this, the fact of the matter is that they falter the most, according to a new report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education.
The Wall Street Journal highlights how the NEA spends its members' money. Mike Antonucci has more.
Teacher quality in Texas is "inequitable" (poorly??constructed headline, Houston Chronicle).??Mike says: Who cares?
Kevin Carey's latest post is about affirmative action, and most of it is sensible. I'm unsure if what you'll read here are positions that Carey has previously espoused on this topic, and I'm not going to traipse off on some fishing expedition to find out.
Andrew Ferguson reviews in today's Wall Street Journal a book that goes behind the scenes at Harvard Business School--and seemingly reveals what one might expect to find behind the scenes at Harvard Business School.
From time to time, while digging up material for forthcoming Fordham reports, op-eds, or blog posts, I stumble upon an unrelated article that catches my interest and causes me to pause and read. Here's one such, written by Checker, entitled "An Open Letter to Lawrence H. Summers." It was published six years ago.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has announced a new job board on its website.
Checker talks about his new book, Troublemaker, in a very chic-looking, new media-ish video interview.
