Bad Brand?
Thursday, December 10th, 2009Does Phoebe Boyer have to change the name of her foundation now?
Archive for December, 2009
It’s That Most Wonderful Time Of Year…Rankings Time…
Thursday, December 10th, 2009Here’s one way to think about charter performance: Despite some quality problems charters are over-represented per-capita on the U.S. News rankings of U.S. high schools, which take into account equity and achievement gaps – as opposed to some other rankings you may have heard of… Disc - I helped develop these USN rankings (an overview of the methods here and a lot of detail here (pdf)).
Update: In the comments section Allison Martell makes a great point. I didn’t mean to imply that the USN rankings indicated a higher achievement mean for charters overall, only that charters are over-represented among the nation’s best high schools (as judged from an equity and college prep standpoint). So the implication isn’t that all charters are great, rather it’s that there is some learning that can happen from these really good charters in terms of methods and efficacy.
I only mentioned the quality problems in the original post to indicate the variance. But, I don’t agree with Allison that “[c]harters are allowed more flexibility, so we shouldn’t be surprised if they are more likely to be exceptionally good, and also more likely to be exceptionally bad.” In theory that’s true. However in practice there are elements of state policy that can move the quality curve substantially to the right – good charter school authorizers, accountability for authorizers, support and fiscal equity for charters, state policies that allow and encourage high performing charters to replicate and serve more students etc…
In the end, having more charters like those that hit the board in the USN rankings requires two changes: More regulation than many in the choice community have to date been comfortable with and more charters, choice, competition and dynamism and disruption than most vested stakeholders are willing to allow right now.
The State Of Education Policy
Thursday, December 10th, 2009This tweet from Politics K-12 says it all. States advised not to make up data as part of Race to the Top…
Global Education Race
Thursday, December 10th, 2009New report from McKinsey coming out of their Singapore meeting (pdf), well worth checking out.
Edujob – KIPP Delta
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009Most, but not all, high performing charter schools are urban ventures. Here are some opportunities in the Delta region with KIPP.
Charters And Nice Mixers And Ovens!
Monday, December 7th, 2009Wow, just in case you actually thought there was a big consensus emerging in the reform debate a lot going on in this issue of the Alabama School Journal (pdf). It’s illustrative…Ben Smith has the political angle on all this, too. But, don’t miss the sweet deals on stainless steel appliances in the back!
Eliza Krigman: Ringmaster
Monday, December 7th, 2009Over at the National Journal education blog they’re debating charter performance. It’ll be a circus before it’s over, any debate involving charters seems to be. My take here: Look beyond the label.
Fishing For Teachers
Monday, December 7th, 2009Evergreen?
Monday, December 7th, 2009Seems like this Troops to Teachers story appears in a big paper every few years now, no?
Great Moments In School Board Relations
Friday, December 4th, 2009In Denver, they’re bringing in a marriage counselor…
Sawchuk Strikes Again!
Friday, December 4th, 2009Friday Fish Pics – Hard To Quantify Edition!
Friday, December 4th, 2009It’s another take a kid fishing edition.
This is the son and daughter of Susan Oliver. She’s a public relations professional in the education reform space. You can follow her on Twitter here. But, since one of her primary clients is the Forum for Education and Democracy that means I can’t tell you what these fish weigh, the gear used to land them, or even what kind they are. Still, nice fish!
Stimulating?
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009New CEP report looks at what’s happening with stimulus dollars around the country. Couple of items worth paying attention to inside.
Cover This!
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009You can check out the new Brookings paper on education news coverage (or more precisely the lack thereof) and see a video of the release event. Should they have called it “Cover Me” instead? Maybe David Brooks would have written on it then…In any event you have to think that a report on the lack of coverage for education will be catnip for education reporters…
Aspen Innovation Conference
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Surging?
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Not a lot about education in the President’s speech last night…we always get short shrift! Ha ha.
Anyway, there is a big education implication coming out of the new policy. Namely, if the President has the left upset over his Afghanistan policy, left and center upset for different reasons about health care reform, and the left only lukewarm, at best, on his education policies then what gets thrown under the political bus when/if the political going gets really tough in 2010? Hint: It is not the two that people actually vote on in national elections. In practice that means policies that don’t sit well with suburban voters (for instance accountability policies that reflect the underachievement of kids of color in suburban schools) or that are disliked by education special interest groups (where do you even start on that list) could face a hard time.
Implications for how strong the policies are and what ESEA reuthorization looks like.
By Popular Demand
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009The papers for next Monday’s AEI conference on the demand side of educational entrepreneurship are now online.
From Andy Smarick’s Mouth To Courtland Milloy’s Ears?
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009In the WaPo Milloy writes on the Oblate Sisters of Providence and the eduangle. (h/t reader OL, thx)
Creating A New Teaching Profession
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009The much anticipated book with that title and edited by Jane Hannaway and Dan Goldhaber is now out. You can read an overview here. It’s like Dan Brown, just without symbols, and uses some of the exact same words you’ll find in works by Malcom Gladwell, Michael Lewis, Sarah Palin, and other bestselling authors! Plus, it makes a perfect stocking stuffer. (Disc. – I have a chapter in it but don’t get paid from royalties so go ahead and buy it).
Uncle Jay & Aspen Innovation
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009A few months ago Richard Whitmire and I argued that now was the time for charter school policies focused on aggressively growing what works and closing down what doesn’t. Well, great minds may think alike but apparently Jay, Richard, and I do, too, as Jay argues much the same in a new column. Unfortunately, that strategy doesn’t sit well with a lot of folks on both sides of the debate.
But, speaking of great minds, at the Aspen Innovation Economy Conference last night Larry Summers was provocative and optimistic about the American innovation challenge in a dinner session with PBS’ Judy Woodruff. Hopefully it’ll be reproduced (Politico article here). He also made the pointed observation that we’re becoming a society with a more powerful culture of financial engineering than the real kind…
Race And Jobs
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009Today’s NYT story on race and employment is important reading and disparate employment/unemployment rates among similarly educated people are an obvious concern. But, concern about that issue should not cause us to lose sight of the power of education in the American economy: Despite the issue The Times raises, overall you’re still much better off with more education. This Ron Haskins report from Brookings shows the power of education for social mobility.
