NYC’s School of One  makes Time’s Top 50 inventions of 2009.

WaPo ed board hits exactly the right notes in this ed on Race To The Top.  Meanwhile, NYT ed board not so happy on the teacher pieces of the stimulus.  Background here.

Meet Nicola Allen.  She’s a second year student at the Darden School of Business at UVA with great private sector and education experience  (including a stint at KIPP).    But first the important stuff:  She’s a badass on the river as this picture shows – and fly fishes.  That’s a mighty trout.  Think you could get a drag-free drift through all those currents?   

There is an active group of education-oriented students at Darden, I spent some time with them this week, so if you’re hiring drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch.   Former teachers, administrators, Education Pioneers, etc…looking for summer opportunities and full-time work upon graduation in this field.

With all the attention on the Race to the Top final regs today, good time as any to read this important TNTP report on opportunities the RTT provides (pdf).

when in the wake of the ARRA data someone would ask this, wonder no longer.

Just when you start thinking nothing in the education debate will surprise you…well, stuff like this happens.

Race to the Top final regulations are on the way Thursday [You can read them here].   Ed Week writes them up.   To some extent they do reinforce the view that the tragedy of Race to the Top is that the Department of Ed has to spend this money at all – the anticipation may well have leveraged more state-level change than the actual program will. 

The punchline is that the readers/reviewers for the state applications are now the entire ballgame.  If they’re not strong and keenly attuned to change and reform then this initiative won’t suceed.  I’m not as glum as some of the voices in the Ed Week story, but the regs have changed (and not in a reformist direction) so without a strong process to really evaluate state plans it is possible that some weak plans could slip through this scoring metric.    In the Department’s defense, they are planning a creative qualitative process to vet the applications after the initial scoring is done.   That’s crucial for quality.

Few things that are getting attention:  It’s easy to see why the Department wanted to create a more comprehensive state capacity rubric, but it could also open the door to a lot of fuzziness.  Again, the expertise of the readers matter a lot.  I’m not freaked out (although some are) by the minimizing of common standards or new assessments, that’s a nod political and capacity realities.   It would have been nice to see high-quality charters weighted more…and they could have been more aggressive on the human capital front.  It’s still a lot of points but could have included more teeth to really delineate states.*  

Bouncing ball to keep your eye on:  New York.   A strict reading of this means the state shouldn’t be eligible, but will be interesting to see how that plays out…the argument is being made that because the NY teacher data ban only applies to tenure it’s not really a ban on evaluation at all.   Of course, a reasonable person might conclude that if a tenure decision isn’t an evaluation then exactly what is?  Then again, a reasonable person would have no place in New York education policymaking.  Update:  More from Tom Carroll on that.

Other states to watch:  CO, LA, DE, FL, TN, IN, RI, MA (although the charter piece takes some pressure off there) and MI with some pending policy changes being debated there.  Wild card DC?

Big risk:   Most states simply don’t have the capacity to do this well right now.  Will they be able to leverage sufficient resources and buy-in from LEAs?

*But, a lot is being made of changes to the language around teacher evaluation.   That’s a bit of a misdirection play.  The original language never made standardized tests the only evaluation criteria so language about “multiple measures” really isn’t a change because it was implied all along.  So if the unions want to claim a perception victory that’s a good place but it’s not a real issue.

The RTD says it well every year.

Also, new Civic Enterprises report today on the asset that veterans are.

I missed this WaPo op-ed by former Senator Alan Simpson when it first ran.  If  you did, too, don’t miss it this time.

Punchline:  It’s going to be awfully hard to get a bill.  Or at least so I argue in US News.   National Journal’s ed blog is debating the what’s next question, too.

Rick Hess is shocked, shocked, to learn there is lobbying going on around a key administration priority. Seriously? Did he just move to Washington or is he angling for a gig on Fox?

It’s par for the course for senior administration officials to lobby on major issues. And it’s also par for the course for an administration to dangle goodies to get votes.  When the going gets really rough they’ll give you a bridge even if you don’t have a river, as they say.  But what Hess implies here, that Duncan might be dealing Race to the Top or I3 dollars for health care votes, is a serious charge because of the structure of those initiatives. So serious, in fact, that Hess quasi-retracts it right after making it! The first line of his last graf sort of renders the rest of the piece irrelevant, no?

In any event, I doubt it’s the case. For starters, Duncan isn’t an idiot.  And statewide initiatives are of less interest to House members than to senators so it’s only really I3 money Duncan could deal and that would be hard to do.   Besides, right now, if anything, it’s the Administration’s concern about getting “Reading Firsted” that’s leading to problematic decisions (overreactions being as common in Washington as lobbying by senior administration officials on major pieces of legislation) around education grant programs.

First Rick went ape over Obama’s speech to students and now this.  I like my Hess politics-free!

Kati Haycock takes on the new ARRA reporting requirements.   And she has a point.  Transparency has its limitations anyway, weak definitions compound that.   The “highly qualified teacher” language in federal law has been so watered down as to be completely devoid of meaning.

Some obvious education implications from this Times Mag story on health care.   

This looks like a great job in the Minneapolis Public Schools (Office of New Schools).

And, last month in the WSJ Richard Whitmire and I noted that media tastes were changing in terms of how teachers’ unions were viewed.   Interestingly, neither The Times nor the WaPo ed pages thought much of the recent New Haven teachers’ contract agreement.   The WaPo weighed-in on that today (and called out Secretary Duncan on the stalled DC teachers’ contract talks).

Kevin Huffman’s first piece is up, voting starts tomorrow.   Keep him on the island!

Update:  The polls are open, vote now!

In the wake of Tuesday’s election there is some speculation that the policy climate in Virginia may become more friendly to charter schools — a change that’s long overdue.   Albemarle County is using chartering in some progressive ways but overall the state’s policy is an embarrassment.  A panel in Williamsburg will discuss that and what might be next on November 18 (pdf).

States are responding to “Race to the Top” in different ways.    Leading states are thinking about big ideas they can build an application around.    States like CA and MI are passing legislation to get in position to compete.   And some states are not doing much, presumably reading the draft guidance and deciding it’s hopeless.   But in New York, which is hamstrung by a few policies that are at odds with core parts of RTT, it looks like a  new strategy is emerging.   With the Hoyt  bill under attack and bottled up, the blame game for why New York may not get a big piece of the money is starting.  Although New York could address its data firewall on teacher-student data and make a few other changes an be in good position, instead right now the inside game seems to be blame the charters for not pulling their weight.

Hope Street Group is hiring for an ed policy director.  Fun, flexible, and innovative organization, good people.

What does it mean?  Short answer is that rough off-year elections for Dems don’t bode well for No Child Left Behind (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) reauthorization.  Only complicates the already tortuous politics because you’re going to have a lot of skittish Dems who either are, or think they are, in marginal seats.  They want accomplishments to run on, but want to keep their seats even more!   Look for more emboldened special interest groups in that environment.

Toss in the delays on health care and all the oxygen Race to the Top is sucking up, and it’s a tough line-up for ESEA.

I hope James Kelly and Allen Odden send a nice bouquet of flowers (or in the Shanker spirit a good bottle of wine) to Randi Weingarten.  She’s made their new SMHC report, which wasn’t going to get a great deal of attention, into something that people are now really paying attention to!

Washington Post is sponsoring a contest for punditry.   It’s down to the final ten – and if  you follow education policy closely one of them will look very familiar to you…Hint:  Rhymes with Hevin Kuffman…

A lot of teachers’ union pushback is emerging on the Hoyt Race to the Top bill in New York.

…and today might be Richard Whitmire’s.

Bill Turque’s second-day story on the Michelle Rhee – City Council debate is well-worth reading but the most interesting story on what’s happening on education in Washington, D.C. is not even an education story at all - and mentioned the issue only in passing:  It was Sunday’s front-page look at Mayor Fenty’s stormy relationship with the city council.  A lot of what’s happening keys off of that.   Remember, it’s all about the kids!

So when Valerie Strauss goes all Rodney King on the same and asks, ‘can’t we all just get along?’   It’s a nice idea, but the obstacle can be summed up in 140 characters or less.  In other words, as often happens in politics, disparate interests with common goals are finding each other in the debate.   Does anyone really think the AFT would be so bent out of shape and excited about D.C. Council Chairman Gray if Michelle Rhee were using the same style and tactics to mandate hiring more teachers and raising teacher salaries across-the-board with no changes to the “tenure” rules?  Somehow I think we’d be hearing a lot less about process…

Update:  Kevin Carey on the niceness meme here.

Jonathan Alter takes a look at the MA Senate race and what’s happening on education politics more generally.  Doesn’t pull any punches on either.