State Of Play
Friday, January 7th, 2011Conor Williams with a good look at where things stand on ed policy in D.C. right now. And Politics K-12 writes-up the leadership transition at NLNS.
Archive for January, 2011
LA Not Confidential
Friday, January 7th, 2011Per the TIME 11 for 11 list, you can change Deasy’s status from “widely expected” to imminent in LA.
Things To Do In New Haven (And Washington) Plus New Reports
Friday, January 7th, 2011New ASCD chapter in Washington, D.C. They’re promising happy hours and substance (is that education policy’s version of bread and circuses?) And the Yale SOM is doing their education conference again this year on March 25th. Remarkable growth and impact of that gathering over the past few years. And this year there is a business plan competition, too.
Two new reports worth checking out. Fordham has one on budget cutting strategies by Marguerite Roza* and Mike Petrilli. I don’t like them all (the bankruptcy one needs more specificity, for instance, and cutting small schools and districts and consolidating isn’t always such a good idea) but it’s worth reading as the fiscal reality in some states is tough and these and other ideas will be on the table.
Also, Center for Education Policy has an interesting look at Common Core implementation (pdf). Some interesting findings on state motivation that cut against the grain of conventional wisdom but also some big red flags on implementation and how messy this could be even in states that are committed. I’d still maintain that there is something worse than the current system with its uneven standards and lack of comparability and that’s a system that appears superficially to have these elements but still actually doesn’t.
*Oversees some BW grants.
11 for 2011
Thursday, January 6th, 2011In this week’s School of Thought column at TIME.com I take a look at 11 education players poised to shake things up in 2011. From Michael Bennet in the Senate to Michelle Rhee around the country as well as Steve Brill, Jeb Bush, David Coleman, John Deasy, Jonah Edelman, “The Kristens,” Wendy Kopp, and Diane Ravitch:
With budget cuts looming, and with more states considering radical changes to teacher tenure and other important policies, 2011 looks to be a big year for education, for better or for worse. Here are 11 reformers poised to shake things up even more in these tumultuous times. These activists are political and apolitical, working to change schools systems from within and without, and can be found in the for-profit, nonprofit and governmental sectors. Some are big names in the education world, others are more behind-the-scenes players. But what they all have in common is the potential to change how Americans think about education and how kids experience school in 2011 — and beyond.
Suspend Disbelief All Ye Who Enter Here!
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011AP writes-up the regulatory fix tucked into spending bill passed by the last Congress on their way out of town. To believe the claims now being made by proponents of the California lawsuit you have believe that Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Labor Committee, its former chair, and a guy who has spent more than a decade trying to use federal policy to improve the quality of the teachers in front of low-income students has suddenly turned his back on all that and now wants low-income kids to have unqualified teachers or at a minimum doesn’t care if they do.
Alternatively, you can believe that the lawsuit in California was a thinly veiled attack on organizations like Teach For America and that the new fix, while imperfect, was a sensible response by Congress given all the problems with the “highly qualified teacher” language in federal law in the first place and the fact that TFA teachers are hardly doing harm in the communities they’re serving in.
Update: More from Chad Aldeman.
Edujobs! All About Data…
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011Here’s a great one at NCTQ, helping them work with U.S. News to build a ranking of teacher prep programs. I was chair of the NCTQ board and helped USN launch a set of rankings (high schools) so I can attest to what a fun opportunity this will be for the right person.
And here’s another great, and senior, one at Data Quality Campaign. DQC isn’t a household name but enormous impact over the past decade.
Fighting Illini
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011Is There A Repeating History App?
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011Cami Anderson Strikes Again
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011I wrote about Cami Anderson’s pathbreaking work in New York City for USN in ’09. She’s still at it and The Times points to one of her successes.
Are You Ready For Some Football?
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011Scale Falls From Our Eyes?
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011Rishawn Biddle has some interesting thoughts on the issue of scale in education. He’s right that making a fetish of scale is counterproductive. But, considering the size of the education enterprise in this country a system of one-offs, whether schools themselves or ventures servicing them, isn’t practical. One issue he doesn’t get into though is just how consistently wrong education’s wise men and women generally are about scale. I can remember meetings just a few years ago where the “experts” solemnly informed us that KIPP (the high-performing network of public charter middle schools) was nice but would never get past a dozen or maybe two dozen schools. Now there are 100. Will there be 10,000? Probably not. More than 100? Certainly. Or consider Teach For America, still widely derided as marginal. And sure, it will never replace other methods of teacher preparation but it is the largest teacher preparation program in the country (5K a year coming up) – and gets the best results overall. The list goes on. The point is that a lot of ideas that haven’t been tried are now being tried and we have a lot to learn about scale and scaling. In addition, there are a lot of policies and barriers. On charter schools, for instance, it’s sort of ridiculous to talk about scaling them when they get 20 percent less funding than other public schools.
Black To Business
Monday, January 3rd, 2011Happy 2011.
Is there anything Stuart Buck can’t do? Here’s his new classical guitar album for children via the awesome CD Baby.
And from New York via Politics Daily, here’s an interesting contrarian take on Cathie Black – not bold enough for the job.
