- It’s not just “pay to play” nowadays. Districts are now charging students enrollment fees, locker fees, registration fees, etc. In Littleton, CO, chemistry costs $10, honors chem costs $20 and AP chem twice as much. Whatever happened to “free and appropriate public education”? Way to pass the buck to your customers.
- The implications of last week’s Georgia Supreme Court decision to ban the state’s charter-school commission go beyond charter policy. As Douglas Blackmon powerfully explains in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Court’s ruling solidifies power with the local school board—long used as a segregating tool, and long a cause of continuing racism. The full article will disturb you, but is well worth the read.
- Move over Rick Hess, Wendy Kopp, and Michelle Rhee. Sarah Mead identifies and interviews fifteen young up-and-coming leaders—those who will take the reins of the education-policy wagon in the decade to come. Congrats to Fordham alum Mickey Muldoon, now at New York’s School of One, who made the list!
- In what Sam Dillon calls a “strange-bedfellows twist,” Michelle Rhee announces that former D.C. teachers’ union president George Parker will serve as a senior fellow for Students First.
- If turning around a failing school is akin to working through a labyrinth while someone is chasing you in the dead of night, then think of Public Impact’s two recent reports as a flashlight and a map of the maze. Helpful stuff, indeed.
- LAUSD is piloting a program whereby students may see their course grades jump significantly higher if they show gains on the relevant subject’s standardized test. Good on the surface—but it carries risks for teacher autonomy and accountability.
- It’s official: Race to the Top 2.0, with monies for early education and for states that narrowly missed the cut-off last time around, has launched.
- Pandering to the through-course assessment crowd, ETS released a summary report from its February research symposium detailing their positives. Let’s be frank: Testing multiple times a year might be good for instruction, but it’s a terrible idea for educational diversity and choice.
- Joel Klein is already influencing the private sector, if not the global economy. At the e-G8 summit (held just before today’s G8), his boss, NewsCorp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch pushed all parties to reinvent schooling for the digital era.
