???A Last Push to Deregulate: White House to Ease Many Rules???
* She was too busy putting out fires.
???A Last Push to Deregulate: White House to Ease Many Rules???
* She was too busy putting out fires.
So says Jay Mathews in his Washington Post column today--at least when it comes to education policy.
If you like the education policies (JUST the education policies) of the current president, you will like the education policies of his successor, no matter which man is chosen. If you don't, you won't.
How can that be? Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) seem to be very different people, with contrasting views of President Bush. But if you examine carefully what they say they want to do about schools, it is just more of the same.
Mathews rightly points out that surrogates to the candidates chat about a lot of the same ideas, from charter schools to non-traditional routes to the classroom to accountability. And both candidates have been careful to avoid talk of ???scrapping??? No Child Left Behind. And he's not the first to notice that there's a ???Washington Consensus??? in education that's long-standing and hard to budge. Yet I'm not entirely convinced that his thesis is correct. If Obama maintains his lead through the weekend and wins the election, we really don't know where he's going to come down on NCLB. Yes, he'll be for ???accountability,??? but the very broad label covers up a million and one specifics that matter a lot to the day to day operation of schools. It's obvious that Mathews wants Obama to maintain Bush-style policies on education, but whether he actually will is quite the open question.
White House photo of President Bush by Paul Morse
???A Last Push to Deregulate: White House to Ease Many Rules???
* She was too busy putting out fires.
???A Last Push to Deregulate: White House to Ease Many Rules???
* She was too busy putting out fires.
Fall Intern Molly Kennedy offers up this reading:
With 25,000 students enrolled in charter schools and an additional 21,000 on waiting lists, charter schools in Boston are putting the burn on public schools .?? As a result, public school officials are seeking a change in funding practices, arguing that the cost of sending their pupils to charter schools is a burden. Some say the districts should learn a lesson about competitiveness; others wonder why the public should be supporting students outside the regular public school system. School superintendents are supporting bills to be filed in January that are designed "to change the charter school funding formula and make it rely less heavily on regular school districts."?? Read more here .
(Left to right): Fordham staffers in costume: Alice takes a peek through the Looking Glass, Sleeping Beauty catches some Zs, Snow White hums to the birds, Concert Goer #1 chills and a Wake Forest track star stretches.
Following the national trend set by 10-year-olds, some women of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute are opting for modest and traditional Disney princess costumes this year and staying away from -- what shall we call them? -- decidedly more revealing outfits. An expected $5.8 million is to be spent on Halloween this year, up a half-billion dollars from 2007, and this money is being spent on more fabric and less-revealing costumes. As Erica Noonan of The Boston Globe points out, ???An era when Halloween costume shopping for girls could be confused with exploring a Victoria's secret lingerie trunk may be fading??? as more consumers opt for ???bumblebees, ladybugs and superheroes.??? We are all disappointed that Mike did not dress up as the Gadfly.
This week, we start off with a double header on the education system's economic woes--and what to do about them. First Checker explains why districts have so much trouble cutting the fat. Enlightening, surely, but not too surprising. What is surprising, though, is that he used this argument back in 2003, the last time our education system was facing a budget crunch (if you don't believe me, go read it yourself!). Seems somethings never change. Then guest editorialist, and political director for ConnCAN,??Marc Porter Magee gives us six suggestions for what states can do to trim their budgets. Instead of bemoaning the sad state of bugetary affairs, he argues, we should take advantage of the recession-caused political will to start cutting where cutting is needed. Further in, you'll hear about the Bush Administrations last NCLB gasp--new regulations, specifically, and most problematically, upping graduating rate reporting requirements--and an Ed Trust study that tries the same argument without any more success. You'll also find out about the proposed??gay high school in Chicago and subsequent uproar. Reviewed this week is a new book edited by Rick Hess (who reveals on the podcast that apparently not only does not read the news--as we learned last week--but also doesn't vote) on educational entrepreneurship and the latest from Notre Dame and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on the future of Catholic Schools. All this and more.
You gotta love California. Seems the Golden State, worried that their wee toddlers' arms are too short 
for proper tree-huggery, will inculcate them with the prerequisite environmentalism another way: through their stomachs. That's the story coming out of San Diego's Neighborhood House Association (NHA) Head Start program, where their 3 and 4 year olds will be fed "organic and nutrient-dense" delicacies to satisfy that noon-time hunger. What's on the menu? No breaded frozen fish sticks or cinnamon muffins for sure. These tots will get "fresh salmon, shrimp, homemade hummus, healthy whole grain bagels and rolls, as well as fresh fruits and vegetables."
Sounds delicious... for children old enough to eat with proper utensils. I'm all for kicking processed, breaded, fried, and canned foods to the curb. But fresh salmon? And hummus? For three year olds? It's a bit ambitious (I've yet to meet a three year old who'll eat mashed chick peas), but I'll give 'em points for effort since school food is??notoriously disgusting.
With California's budget woes in mind, the plan has bottom line benefits too: NHA Director of Nutrition Services Kristine Smith, RD explains: "We balanced our new menu with more affordable recipes and better ingredients.?? Legumes, lentils, rice and pasta are very affordable and can be used as the base of many recipes.?? Making food from scratch also saves money and allows us to monitor the nutrient value since we know what is contained in the product."
And the environment? That's helped, too. Smith: "Organic foods help preserve our environment. The use of organic and health conscious ingredients is better for our children's bodies and better for the planet they'll inherit." Got a point there. Hey Mike, we say we're the greenest tank in town... when will Fordham start serving fresh salmon and shrimp for lunch?
Sounds like there's much to like, even if it doesn't include the hummus.
(HT to Greg Toppo for this story--and the post's title.)