Critics of NYC schools chancellor Joel Klein (of which there is at least one important one in this office) and/or Al Sharpton (ditto) may not like reports that the duo is taking its Education Equality Project on the road. Ed reform's new odd couple recently met with Obama staffers in Chicago, and word is that McCain may officially sign onto the project today when he talks education at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati.
This fall, Denver Public Schools will introduce the Mile High Parent Campaign, which encourages moms and dads to devote 5,280 minutes a year to their children's educations. Cities situated at lower elevations are advised not to emulate the plan.
In other news from my hometown, ProComp, widely touted as the nation's model merit pay plan, is provoking some nasty skirmishes between district and union leaders.
Louisiana's new anti-evolution law may be??challenged in the courts.
Why don't we??round up??some Los Angeles high school students, put them in a room together, and ask them to pontificate??about why Asian students do better academically than Latino students? I'm sure??what they say will be revelatory; I'm sure??we're not wasting their time and filling their heads with nonsense.
Will variations on this wine trick never grow old? Never, it seems.
Yes, there is an education angle .
The candidate's education plan is available. From a reform standpoint, there really is??much to like.
Perhaps the U.S. could foment more such strikes in other nations, and thereby give its students a better shot on comparative??international tests.??In the U.K.:
Unions said that more than half a million workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland joined a 48-hour walkout in protest at a 2.45 per cent pay offer.
The effects of the dispute, which involved everyone from lollipop ladies and teaching assistants to driving examiners, were felt across the country.
What's a lollipop lady? Not sure I want to know, actually.
A lot of people, and not just Republicans, have been waiting for John McCain to unveil his thinking about education policy. While Barack Obama has made multiple speeches on the subject (most recently to both teacher union conferences) and has elaborate position papers on his campaign website, the Arizona senator said little, except for tantalizing bits about his own education. Last month, however, McCain advisor Lisa Graham Keegan predicted that he would soon address this issue. She was right. Today in Cincinnati, at the NAACP convention, McCain framed an ambitious and fairly comprehensive array of education reforms and asked civil rights leaders to join him in pressing for them. It included some familiar GOP refrains (school choice, especially) but also moved in such interesting new directions as virtual education, giving budgetary authority to school principals, alternative certification for teachers and several forms of differential pay, including more money for teachers who work in "troubled schools". It begins to look possible that education will turn into a bona fide election issue after all-and that differences between the presidential candidates in this sphere will actually prove interesting and salient.
Update: The text of his prepared speech is here.
Update II: Senator Obama spoke to the NAACP Monday night, and he also mentioned education in his speech, albeit less directly than McCain.
According to the Montgomery Advertiser, Alabama has announced a revolution in higher education: It's going to make sure that fake for-profit institutions of higher ed are no longer skipping town with students' tuition money. Apparently, an overwhelmed Department of Postsecondary Education has been unable to adequately regulate private colleges in the state, allowing phony schools to set up shop in the great state of the Southern Longleaf Pine and sell degrees willy-nilly. The new safeguards are overwhelmingly brilliant:
Proving that they're not diploma mills will mean doing things they've never had to do before such as producing audited financial statements, federal and state tax returns, requiring owners to have good reputations and adopting a definition of academic fraud.
However did they think of all these great ideas? To Alabama's credit, the Associated Press gives a slightly clearer (and less guffaw-inducing) take on the situation. And perhaps we should give the poor Department of Postsecondary Education a break since, according to the Montgomery Advertiser, it has only a "two and a half-person staff."
...What is a half-person?
The Washington Post reports that Maryland has shown huge gains in test scores, particularly among disadvantaged students, though the usual doubts about dumbing-down abound. Fordham's own study of state test cut-scores suggests such skepticism is warranted.