If, like most Americans, you haven't the faintest idea what ESRA is, don't feel bad. The Education Sciences Reform Act is a classic inside-the-beltway statute best known by the smallish number of people and institutions directly affected by it.
It's not just that Leo Casey noticed that I lost a few pounds, or that
The NEA is finally moving to endorse Senator Barack Obama for president, reports Mike Antonucci. Well I'm glad they cleared that up!
I read stuff like this and think it's some kind of joke. That teachers in Los Angeles??are required to spend one hour of the school day protesting outside school, or else, according to union president A.J. Duffy, they "will be crossing a picket line," is just anachronistic and ridiculous.
Race-based school integration is on the way out. But Richard Kahlenberg thinks, and hopes, that economic integration is on the way in.
Gov. Ted Strickland may not have formal control of the Ohio Department of Education, but he got half of what he wanted last week when Superintendent Susan Tave Zelman announced her resignation (see here). The news wasn't a surprise.
The explosion of cell-phone text-messaging, especially among young people, has ignited a debate about what the practice means to the skill of writing.
Fordham has learned a lot about sponsoring charter schools in the last three years. Now we've gained experience in the unfortunate task of closing some schools. The Omega School of Excellence, and East End Community School, in Dayton, and Veritas Cesar Chavez Academy, in Cincinnati, will not reopen next year.
There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about Dayton Public Schools during the last year. Seldom does a week pass without a front-page article or an editorial describing the profound challenges facing the district.
If high-quality teachers don't want to work in schools where students of one race predominate (a claim that seems dubious, for the reasons Mike points out), this fact??remains: students at lots of schools are going to be of the same race. Alas, housing patterns make it so.
From Ed Week: States that set easy targets during No Child Left Behind's early years will now??"have to make annual gains of 10 percentage points or more in the proportion of students scoring as proficient in those subjects...."
From this Palm Beach Post article, about college graduates??who have??a tough time finding jobs:
While Eduwonk Andy and Leo Casey of the United Federation of Teachers spar about teacher collective bargaining agreements and whether or not they "prevent educational innovation," some
The Seattle Times is into the third day of its series on the "resegregation" of the Seattle Public Schools.
Still trying to get your head around the recent Reading First evaluation? Do you work on Capitol Hill and want to give your member of Congress a quick overview of the hub-bub?
Mike just quoted this from the Rocky Mountain News: Nearly two dozen teachers from Denver's Montclair Elementary took a field trip of their own Friday--to their union headquarters to urge a vote on the school's six-week-old request for autonomy.
My short post today on the decision of a couple-dozen Denver high school teachers to skip school last Friday did not sit well with one commenter and at least one educator. The commenter wrote:
The latest issue of Commentary contains a review of Checker's newest book, Troublemaker. It's available here for subscribers.
With the release of every new education report, it seems, we hear from commentators that the findings are promising but certainly do not constitute a "silver bullet" or a "panacea" for k-12's problems. No longer.
Amid all the news of doom and gloom, here's one reason for optimism: America's best spellers appear to be getting better and better.
Baffled by America's arcane process for electing a president, the Edmonton Sun's Edward Greenspan has this to say:
Republicans should be thankful that, according to Rasmussen,* education ranks only sixth out of ten issues for American voters right now, because Congressional Democrats are opening up a big
My recent post on special education (SPED) had one education scholar emailing me to
