Would you like some cheese with that whine?

Recently chastened, I offer this less controversial fare:

Discovering "academic freedom"

By all means spare yourself the burden of reading, as I did this week in the esteemed National Review Online, that criticizing sneaky attempts to undermine evolution in k-12 science class is somehow akin to promoting eugenics.

Green means go

Michelle Rhee wants to pay teachers in Washington, D.C., close to $131,000 a year--but there's a catch. To make the big bucks, educators will have to sacrifice job security. The D.C. schools chancellor has proposed to establish two pay tiers, red and green.

WSF: Grand idea?

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, referred to always as "young conservatives," have written a much ballyhooed book, Grand New Party, which purports to show Republicans how they can win in November and beyond. The key, say the authors, is to appeal to Sam's Club voters--i.e., working people without college degrees.

WWTJD?

Must've been a slow day at the G-8 Summit. The Washington Post reports, on A1, that "Asian American students will outnumber white classmates for the first time" at Thomas Jefferson High School (colloquially known as T.J.) in Fairfax County, Virginia. Some fret that the highly selective school, which garnered the top spot in U.S.

No se puede!

That's the message South Carolina is sending to undocumented students now that it's become the first state in the nation to bar illegal immigrants from attending its public colleges and universities.

One nation, indivisible?

Watching the "Capitol Fourth" concert and ensuing fireworks on TV the other evening, four-year-old granddaughter in my arms, I grew as misty, sentimental, and patriotic as I usually do on America's birthday (which happens also be be little Emma's "half-birthday"). The next morning, however, I awoke with my ever-more-frequent sense of foreboding about the nation's future.

Has Student Achievement Increased Since 2002?: State Test Score Trends Through 2006-2007

Nancy Kober, Naomi Chudowsky, Victor ChudowskyCenter on Education PolicyJune 2008

Flunked

February 2008EFF Films

Re: Hands-on demonstration

Didn't we come out in favor of burning crosses into students' flesh??in our recent report, Who Will Save America's Urban Catholic Schools???Or am??I confusing??cross-branding with another of our??recommendations,

From the Dept. of "Say Wha?"

Eduwonkette provides a fine example of the??educational gobbledygook that we must??hack away in order to find some clarity. Here's a snippet:

Show me the...

Education Week looks at how much money??each presidential candidate would??devote to schools.

Hands-on demonstration

Bobby Jindal may be wrong in trying to get religion back into science classrooms but at least he's playing by the (text)book. MSNBC reported yesterday that a science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, burned crosses into the arms of his students.

TJ

Here's more on TJ, i.e, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Fairfax County, Virginia.

McCain to talk schools

AP reports that he'll do it next week when he speaks at the NAACP convention. Update: More from Campaign K-12.

Reg is no Lech

Here's a fine wrap-up, from Ed Week (subscription required, but

From the Dept. of Odd Headlines

"Gambling addict gets 18 months for embezzling schools" It started with small stuff, like overhead projectors. But when she bet the library in a game of high-stakes hold???em, the clinic on red, and the playground on Federer, and lost them all, administrators suspected something was amiss.

Priorities

Yesterday, he who is the Democrat presumed nominated, Barack Obama, said this: You know, I don't understand when people are going around worrying about, "We need to have English-only." They want to pass a law, "We want English-only."

More on Louisiana

Good study, bad spin

That's my take on the new Marcus Winters/Jay Greene/Julie Trivitt study on the impact of high-stakes testing on low-stakes subjects in Florida.

Still don't get it

Mica Pollock, an "anthropologist of education," which I assume means that she excavates fossilized Australopithecus pencil boxes in the Olduvai Gorge, graciously comments about my last post (in which I quoted from an interview with her about her new book):

Three cheers for broken government

Word around Washington is that Congress is unlikely to finish its appropriations bills before the election and may choose to pass a yearlong "continuing resolution" for all of fiscal year 2009.

Why Michelle Rhee is different

Rereading this Washington Post article on Michelle Rhee's plan to woo teachers into ceding tenure and seniority privileges, I noticed a passage near the end that illuminates a different ed policy discussion:

Right op-ed, wrong subject

Kudos to Education Secretary Margaret Spellings for taking to the pages of the Washington Post to defend DC's

Pure pork?

The Cristo Rey network of schools (featured in our Catholic schools report) may benefit from a Cong

Louisiana's law: unevolved thinking

An article on NRO defends Louisiana's evolution muddle, a muddle that Governor Bobby Jindal has done much to bring about. The author writes:

American Politics Aren't 'Post-Racial'

Thusly titled was Dorothy Rabinowitz's??article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, a piece that looked at the race-based shenanigans that??affected one student at Purdue University.

Only in Hyde Park

Mike's post about the Obama girls sent me briefly to the website of the University of Chicago lab school

Hail to their chief

Highlights of Obama's speech to the NEA this weekend can be found here, amid quite a bit of applause (except for that pesky reference to teacher pay).

Scapegoating race

In Washington Post front-page news this morning, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, VA, has reported its freshman class of 2012 will be 45 percent Asian--and only 42 percent white. Crisis! (Really, though, front page news?