Out in LA it’s clear A.J. Duffy has been learning from the Green Dot example…”tear down this bureaucracy”… that’s some good theater!

Last night’s ES book discussion about Jay Mathews’ new book on KIPP can be heard online now and will be on C-Span soon.

Who among us could argue that Rick Hess doesn’t know about bars at closing time?

Now is the time to launch that advocacy group for 5th-year seniors you’ve been contemplating…

A debate with some actual substance has broken out over the stimulus bill.   Not the phony contraceptive debate or the phantom CBO report debate, but rather a real debate about short term spending relative to long term investments.   On the one hand the point of the stimulus is to create or save jobs as quickly as possible, which means spending money quickly to try to head-off the worsening economic situation.    On the other hand, when we’re on the cusp of again spending upwards of a trillion dollars it’s worth asking whether the dollars could be leveraged more effectively against future challenges the nation faces.  Infrastructure is not surprisingly emerging as a flash point here because the trade-offs are pretty clear.  There are some implications there for education.  But, interestingly, again proving itself to be either a cheap date or missing a long-view the education community hasn’t really said much about how this school construction money could be used to leverage more funding down the road so the debate is happening more around other components of the bill.

There is a general consensus that school facilities are a problem in a lot of communities and most in the education community are excited about the proposed spending on school construction (and even more excited if it means that public charter schools get frozen out as apparently is happening in the Senate!).  And school construction is an efficient way to create and save jobs. 

But everyone seems to be forgetting that it’s been a decade-plus effort to get real funding for school construction (in fact a half-century effort if you want to go back to when President Eisenhower first proposed federal spending for facilities).   So, with this much money on the table should some of it be held back to create a longer-term and more permanent financing system for school construction?  For instance, you could give some grants now, for immediate or “shovel ready” projects, but hold some back to create state or regional infrastructure banks for long-term support for building and renovating education facilities, including charters and other non-traditional approaches.   Under the current proposal education advocates will be back hat in hand for more money as soon as this is spent and without a real hook in federal policy.

Of course, the appropriators are understandably concerned that if they allow programs into the bill that are not current law it will create more targets for the Republicans, who are clearly feeling around for weak points to push on in the public debate.   And many economists are saying spend as fast as you can now given the gravity of the situation and worry about later later.  So this is one where there are valid viewpoints on all sides but it’s a conversation worth having.  This is a big opportunity.

New report from the Cooney Center on mobile devices and student learning (pdf).  Download it to your Blackberry.   And NASBE is looking for a new director of government relations, good perch over the next few years.  

Over the course of a week I get hundreds of emails asking me to post things on the blog.  Sometimes they’re just vendor requests but often it’s interesting content and pitched items and op-eds that are just not a good fit for one reason or another.  But don’t just toss that stuff.  If you have things you want Eduwonk readers to see you can post them on the Facebook Page for Eduwonk, which allows any user to post content and can be more interactive that way.  It’s quietly grown into a community over there and you can use it.

If you’re an education reform minded foodie you don’t want to miss this General Manager position (scroll down) at Revolution Foods (a very cool education organization that is not an eduhousehold name).   And the Algiers Charter School Association in New Orleans is looking for a CEO.

Jay Mathews will be discussing his new book on KIPP with Jonah Edelman, Richard Barth, and me at an ES book event Wednesday night in Washington, D.C. at the SAIL School.

In a single blog post Charlie Barone takes you from the Thelonious Monk documentary “Straight No Chaser” to today’s debates about 21st Century Skills.

WaPo profiles the newest (at least for a few days) United States Senator:  Michael Bennet.   Everyone, especially the Republicans, now thinking this seat will be an easy pick-up in ‘10 have obviously not been following this guy’s career closely enough.

Education is a field where there is an awful lot of “everybody knows…”, in other words various truths that “everybody knows” about issues, people, research, etc…regardless of whether there is much evidence to support them.   Often some deeper digging is useful.   For instance, “everybody knew” that the small schools initiative in New York was discriminatory toward children with special needs and English-language learners, over the past few years I got a slew of emails to that effect and several bloggers and other critics took it as an article of faith so it’s been reprinted in Education Week, Forbes, etc…Turns out, according to the Office of Civil Rights at The U.S. Department of Education, which just completed an actual investigation of alleged violations, that’s not accurate (pdf).

Robin Chait and Raegan Miller turn-in a piece on how one common belt-tightening tactic used by school districts – letting the newest teachers go first when dollars get tight – can be counterproductive.   They’re right, but this points up a larger issue on teacher quality more generally:  Young/new teacher doesn’t equal good teacher and older/veteran teacher doesn’t equal burned-out teacher (and the opposite is true, of course, too).   Effectiveness in the classroom is correlated with, well, effectiveness in the classroom, not all the various proxies in use today.   In addition to thinking about who you want to let go if you have to, that has big implications for measuring and evaluating teacher effectiveness, how to structure school district human resources, and how to approach teacher compensation.   And that’s probably why things pretty much continue to happen the way they do…

So, you want to get your paws on some of that forthcoming stimulus money?   Thompson Publications is hosting a free call to show you how (and presumably entice you to use their services, but the call and information are free).

Scroll down to the bottom row of pictures at this site and you can see New Schools’ Julie Mikuta, Obama advisor and school principal Mike Johnston, and his wife Courtney at the Athletes and Artists reception Monday night.

Today, MLK Day, is intended to be a day of service.  Here’s national service leader Alan Khazei and David Gergen discussing the issue in USAT, and here’s Khazei on the Colbert Report discussing service.

Two education cases headed for the high court.  The 4th Amendment one is interesting as those issues generally are, but the special education case, basically a rerun, is potentially very consequential for both choice and special education policy.  It’s not cut and dry, and special education policy is always a balancing act, but allowing parents to act unilaterally would create some serious problems for school districts.   SCOTUS blog has more.  If the court rules in favor of the parents, expect a legislative battle to follow.

Charlie Barone is mistaken here, this is obviously the work of Khalenberg and his direct channel to the great beyond…I also hear Shanker has some concerns about the stimulus bill…

GreatSchools.net and Business Week have a new ranking of American high schools out.  It’s similar and different to the US News and Newsweek rankings.  MDRC has some new data on performance-based scholarships, with community college implications, and CC’s are likely to be a big issue in the next few years.  Teachers in Washington, D.C. and nationally can take advantage of a free workshop on teaching about Lincoln.  He, too, seems likely to be big over the next few years.

Turns out that the Washington Post’s editorial board did have it right all along and DC Charter School Board Chair Tom Nida did nothing improper.

You can watch yesterday’s hearing for Arne Duncan in C-Span’s video library.

NYT reports on the apparent unionization of two KIPP charter schools in New York City.  I’m not familiar with all the details but on the larger implications two things in The Times story jump out.  

First, Jeanne Allen of the Center for Education Reform says that “A union contract is actually at odds with a charter school.”  “Actually” is the wrong word there.  The more accurate way to say that would be, “could be.”  Why?  Well one example is the unionized and highly sucessful Green Dot Public Schools, another is KIPP Bronx, which has been unionized for some time.  And there are others, good and bad.   What matters is what’s in the contract not unionization per se.   But, on the other hand, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told the NYT  that, “We have often said that the charter school movement and unionization are things that can easily be harmonized.”   That would be a better encapsulation of the issue absent the word “easily.”   This charter-union conversation is a very important one for the field but it’s a challenging one for a variety of reasons.   It’ll be a lot of things but I don’t think easy is one of them.    

Want to know more?  A few years ago Paul Hill and I brought together union leaders and charter school leaders to discuss some of these issues.    This article (pdf) and this paper (pdf) summarize that work and some of the issues.  This book that Jane Hannaway and I did also looks at some of the issues as found the same thing as this new study from CRPE:  Namely that the issues are more complicated than they seem.

Rob Saldin and I discuss the BCS and mountain state politics in The NY Daily News.

This is a real issue for students and an important column but, still, you have to wonder if John Speedball was out sick the day it was written or what…

In yesterday’s NYT  Tom Friedman recycles the idea of tax-cuts for teachers.   Kevin Carey picks it apart over at the deuce.  Kevin’s objections are important but the larger issue is that there are plenty of public officials who can make as compelling a case as teachers for some targeted tax relief:  First responders, the military, urban emergency room workers, and so forth.   There are better ways to achieve the same goal that do not raise those equity issues. 

For teachers, the bottom line is that we ought to pay teachers more but we ought to pay them differently as well — meaning finding ways to incorporate measures besides years of experience and earned degrees into salary plans.   Those measures include factors such as shortages by subject, hard-to-serve schools, special skills and knowledge, and performance and results.  Right now salary  (which comprises the majority of education spending) is overwhelmingly allocated based on years worked and degrees, two proxies that research shows have little to no relation to effectiveness.  

Friedman’s suburban angst, though, is implicitly getting at a real issue and so while his solution is problematic the issue he’s discussing is real.   One of the reasons that pay looks the way it looks today is because of an unspoken assumption that a lot of teachers won’t be the primary wage earner for their family.  It’s a legacy of the longtime demographics of the field and it has created a parasitic economy around teacher salaries.   Problem is, that’s not the case anymore, creates real problems, and is another reason to really professionalize how we pay teachers.   But that’s an input and an output issue, not merely an issue of just how much to pay.

In today’s WSJ, Joel Klein and Al Sharpton do their “Dear President-elect Obama” letter.  Ignore the headline, it’s not really a charter school-focused op-ed.

Well, since this part of the stimulus package seems quite unlikely to go anywhere, here’s a great video you can watch this weekend.  It’s Dan Willingham talking about reading and it’s not to be missed. 

Another good thing to do this weekend would be to help a DC-based youngster write an essay to enter in this contest the Obama-Biden Inaugural Committee is sponsoring.

I’ll be the first one to say that Michelle Rhee’s style carries some backfire potential, but to compare her challenge in turning around almost the entire D.C. school system, demonstrably one of the nation’s most broken and with all the politics that go with that, to the challenge of turning around one school in affluent Montgomery County as a WaPo columnist does today is preposterous.

Don’t miss the comments of Wade Henderson and Senator Kennedy in this WaPo story on the No Child anniversary.

Meanwhile, the new superintendent in Denver, taking over for the Senate-bound Michael Bennet is also a serious education reformer. 

KIPP’s Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin take to the pages of The Washington Post to outline a five-point education agenda for President-Elect Obama.  You should read it.  It’s important and good stuff they put forward and hard to disagree with any of the proposals.  Still, I have to quibble with the weight they put on national standards as a lever for reform.   Mike and Dave note that with KIPP operating in 19 states now they see firsthand the mess that the maze of educational standards creates.   Sure, and national standards would surely increase efficiency there as well as create a common framework for other curricular and pedagogical innovations.  And that’s not a small thing.   But national standards are not a pedagogy nor a toolbox for teachers and just as today’s standards lead to a lot of low-quality teaching so will a new set if not coupled with big changes in how we approach teaching.  In other words, just as they won’t solve today’s political challenges, national standards alone will not solve some of the core teaching challenges we face today and we should be careful not to overestimate what national standards can do for us.

Update:  In the comments section Robert “Panic at the” Pondiscio helpfully illustrates the problem here by confidently asserting that a national assessment would be more transparent.  But why would a national assessment axiomatically be more transparent?  In fact, there is some evidence it wouldn’t be.   Why?  Well, we have one now, it’s called the NAEP, it’s very valuable but it’s not exactly a model of transparency in terms of its inner workings…just ask the other vendors who would like to bid on its contract or the combatants in the various debates about its technical worthiness…National standards and assessments are not an inherently bad idea, they have a lot of promise, but like a beautiful woman they seem to cause otherwise sensible people to completely lose their bearings.  The same political problems that exist in states exist in Washington, too, and it will take very intentional action to address that.