Around The Edublogs

At Edspresso CCCR’s Piche and Alliance For School Choice’s Bolick are swapping some spit over No Child’s public school choice provisions. Also at Edspresso, ES’s Kevin Carey and ATE’s David Ritchey are debating teacher certification. That debate doesn’t seem so complicated to me: You’ve got an expansive and expensive regulatory apparatus with no solid research base behind it and some evidence of adverse consequences from it. That doesn’t mean you stop licensing and/or certifying teachers completely as some argue because in some subfields, for instance reading, there is a research base and some licensing mechanism is needed in a public system. But it does mean that a substantial streamlining would not be either irrational or not research-based. It would be politically tough though!

At his place indefatigable flack AFTie John continues to unleash ad hominen attacks. How ’bout some, you know, criticism of the article itself? I can’t tell, perhaps there is some disclosure missing from the column but AFTie John doesn’t say. Somehow I remain opposed to vouchers as a public policy despite the clownish tactics of most other opponents…Also, while you’re there check out his characterization of a question from the new PDK poll:

NCLB Ain’t Helping: 37% say NCLB has made no difference in the performance of schools in the community, and 21% say it has hurt those schools. (Just 26% say it has helped.)

Uh…couldn’t the “just” go elsewhere just as easily? Must be all that AFTie “nuance” I keep hearing about…

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