Great one, COO at DSST Public Schools.

Wednesday March 16, fun event in Washington at Cap City Brewery by Union Station:  Navigating the DC Education World with Nancy Lue, Brad Jupp, Kevin Carey, and Wayne Ryan. Focus is how to get established and involved in the crazy quilt DC education scene. Panel discussion followed by a happy hour, it’s sponsored by the new DC chapter of ASCD.  RSVP here.

In his annual letter to shareholders Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffet sounded upbeat about America’s long-term prospects.  Implications in the sky is falling debate about schools.

And new look at the good and bad of chartering in California. Some important info here to help understand the landscape and what’s happening in a way you’re not going to get in the national debate about charters…

New York Times writes-up the life of David Kearns who passed away yesterday. But while the article talks a lot about his specific education work, it doesn’t mention what may be his most enduring legacy:  People he mentored or helped grow at places like New American Schools are now all over the education world, on both sides of the aisle, and in a variety of roles.

Also, good local round-up of where things stand in Wisconsin and a good look at the polls on all this.   Again with some evidence that Scott Walker is hurting not helping education reform by turning this into a referendum on collective bargaining.

If you didn’t get enough of all the TFA back and forth around the summit, NPR’s Here and Now revisits some of the big issues.

New report from The New Teacher Project:  The Case Against Quality Blind Layoffs (pdf). Important (and pretty well-timed given the national debate right now).  Their stuff tends to drive the debate so check this one out.

A lot of people are chattering about Checker Finn’s critique of moderate Democratic education reformers and their reaction to the Wisconsin situation. But it seems to me Finn would have a much stronger case if he could (a) show where some moderate Dem has reversed course on a position in the wake of Wisconsin or (b) acknowledged that, in fact, so far the only people who have really changed course are Republican governors in states like Indiana or Florida.  To say that moderate reform Dems who were against abolishing collective bargaining before the Wisconsin episode are still against abolishing it now is true, yes, but doesn’t seem like much of an argument…So partisanship is fun but I’d actually be more interested in hearing Finn’s take on the other argument making the rounds:  By overreaching Republicans like Scott Walker may actually be setting back efforts to make some common-sense changes to teachers contracts.

This week’s School of Thought column at TIME.com picks-up where the debate in WI is stopping:  The fight over bargaining rights is obscuring an important set of issues that need attention – and where progress can be made.  I discuss five common practices in teachers contracts and/or state law and regulation that need to be changed:

Given their place as the most powerful public employee union, teachers unions are front and center in the debate going on in Wisconsin. But underneath the high-decibel clashes between tea partiers and public employees unions are some contentious education policy issues reformers, teachers unions, and analysts have debated (and sometimes even collaborated to fix) for years.

Although teachers contracts are often singled out, in practice the rules and regulations most commonly cited as problems by school superintendents, school reformers, and not infrequently teachers themselves, are often found in state law as well. That’s why schools in states without teachers unions tend to operate pretty much like schools in places with powerful unions. In Virginia, for instance, where I served on the state board of education, it would be difficult to tell the difference between most of our schools and schools in heavily unionized Maryland. It’s also why teachers unions are not the only culprit here. They did not unilaterally create these rules and regulations—someone signed those contracts or passed those laws.

So forget the theatrics in Wisconsin, reform doesn’t have to mean abolishing collective bargaining. But, if we’re serious about having school systems that put student learning first and creating a genuine profession for teachers here are five common practices that must change.

Don’t miss Randi Weingarten on Colbert discussing the Wisconsin situation.

Sara Mead on pre-K and charter schools and how the two efforts can help each other in a new NACSA policy brief (pdf).

Diane Ravitch on Teach For America v. Whitney Tilson on Teach For America.

Rick Kahlenberg* on Michelle Rhee and economic integration v. Richard Whitmire on Michelle Rhee.

*Sidenote, Rick writes, “why haven’t charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire?”  Given the characteristics of the consistently top-performing charters is this really a road Rick wants to go down?

Last we heard from Liz Cottrell she was making news with some new findings about lava and how the earth forms. Now she’s back helping with a new virtual game for middle schoolers at the Smithsonian (with video!). That’s education connection enough for this blog but she’s got another one, too…

Networks for teachers to share lessons and content have generally faltered – whether within existing systems or some of the start-ups.  But Better Lesson seems to be getting some traction. And on the same let’s go to the videotape for a look at what they’re up to with KIPP! Keep an eye on them.

Elsewhere: RiShawn Biddle takes a look at D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray.  In Ed Week Michelle McNeill takes a look at what states that lost in the Race to the Top competition are up to, important article.  You should also check out the CEP report (pdf) McNeill discusses if you’re following ARRA spending.  Similarly, Hechinger report has several articles on recovery act education spending and Race to the Top out as well.

I was called an educational Neville Chamberlin for pointing out that some of the panic over international test scores is overdone.  Ben Wildavsky dives into the same issue and makes some good points in FP.

Gates Foundation awarding competitive grants to states that take steps to improve college completion.

And a couple of good reports from Public Impact, charters, blended learning, and more.

10 Wisconsin questions I’d like to hear answered below, but three other Wisconsin issues worth mentioning.  There has been some rhetoric about the solvency of the state pension system for teachers.  In fact, while Wisconsin has some unfunded liability it’s manageable and in better shape than most states (pdf).  Although the state is facing some other fiscal problems it’s hard to say the pension system there is in a crisis.

Second, when Jane Hannaway and I did Collective Bargaining in Education we noted in the conclusion ‘that mend it don’t end it’ would focus attention on some important issues while efforts to just do away with bargaining altogether would shift attention from those issues and turn into an unproductive food fight…

Finally, a lot of ink (or pixels) are being spilled over whether states with strong unions have better school systems.  This one isn’t that complicated. Educational practices around the country are pretty homogenous so unionization per se isn’t a powerful variable.  Easy example:  Single-salary schedules.  You have them in right-to-work states and closed-shop states.  It’s the practices that matter, not the existence of unions.  Or put another way, to say that the presence or lack of unions in a state impacts schooling is a classic correlation-causation fallacy.

Isn’t Hartford, CT supposed to be ground-zero on progressive teachers contracts?

Bonus extra School of Thought column in TIME tied to teacherageddon in Wisconsin.  It’s ten questions it would be great to hear the Governor, the unions, and President Obama answer about this whole episode:

Last Tuesday, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, convened hundreds of teachers union leaders and school district leaders in Denver to discuss ways management and labor could work together better. Kumbaya!

Two days later, on Thursday, all hell broke loose in Madison, Wisconsin. The flashpoint was Republican Governor Scott Walker’s plan to address that state’s budget gap by making public employees contribute more to health care coverage and his proposal to eliminate collective bargaining by most public employees — including teachers. Democratic state legislators went into hiding to thwart a vote on the measure and schools closed as thousands of teachers left their classrooms and descended on the state capital.

The two episodes vividly illustrate the hope, and the reality, of labor-management issues in education today. As Madison becomes ground zero for the debate over government spending and public sector reform some hard questions are getting lost in political theatrics and overwrought rhetoric. Here are questions Wisconsin’s governor, labor leaders, and President Obama should have good answers for, and so far don’t:

Read the entire thing here.

133 years ago the Lincoln County War was breaking out.   Today it’s the battle of Madison.

But as you’re checking all that out don’t miss TIME’s Michael Grunwald on the stimulus and RTT.

Emily Ayscue Hassel, Bryan C. Hassel and Joe Ableidinger have a provocative new paper out from PPI about strategies to dramatically scale-up the best charter schools (pdf). Also, as I noted in yesterday’s TIME column, the great school choosing guide the Hassel duo wrote is now available free online.

And Karen Hawley Miles says resource issues undergird union-management collaboration (or as we’re seeing in Wisconsin, confrontation).

This week’s School of Thought column at TIME again goes with the “5 myths” meme.  This week I look at school vouchers, which are reemerging as an issue in many places and on Capitol Hill:

One of the most contentious budget debates this year may be over something the president did not include in his 2012 spending plan — school vouchers. Now more often called “scholarships,” vouchers have been debated for decades, but support for these initiatives is on the rise.

Let’s start with D.C. After years of discussion, Congress established a plan in 2004 to give 1,700 students in Washington a voucher of up to $7,500 to attend private and religious schools in the city as alternatives to the frequently lousy neighborhood schools. The program was controversial from the start — it was the first federal funding for vouchers in three decades. But in 2009, under intense pressure from the teachers unions, Congress and the Administration began to dismantle the program and no new students are participating today. New Speaker of the House John Boehner says restoring the program is a top priority.

Meanwhile, there are rumblings about voucher proposals emerging in states around the country including Indiana, Pennsylvania and Florida. In Douglas County, Colorado members of the school board want to create a voucher program just for that county. Meanwhile states like Louisiana, Ohio, and Florida already have established voucher programs and the once-landmark and controversial voucher program in Milwaukee now serves more than 20,000 students with little fanfare.

What does the renewed push for vouchers mean for our education system? That is of course a matter of debate. Proponents and opponents make a lot of overblown claims about what vouchers will or won’t do. But with a number of programs already in force, we actually know quite a bit about how they work. So, if this debate comes to a school system near you, here are five claims every parent should be skeptical about:

Read the entire thing here.

Jeffery Pflaum posts a thoughtful take on this TIME column about what schools can learn from the NFL.

I’ve been as skeptical of incoming D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s commitment to education reform as most and worried by some early signals but I think Rick Hess is jumping the gun here a bit with his sky is falling post today.

Gray may yet end up being a disappointment but while these early decisions are being made it’s important not to confuse packaging with what’s in the box.  Katherine Bradley’s comments about including more professional development in the evaluation system, for instance, are an easy throwaway because the current evaluation system does include some now.  And Gray’s comments on the IMPACT system a few weeks ago were taken somewhat out of context.

Better indicators to watch right now:  What the city does or doesn’t do to keep low-performing teachers away from students in the wake of the arbitrator’s ruling and later this spring what happens when evaluation results come back, there were a lot of teachers on the bubble.  Also, who the actual chancellor ends up being, not the apparent ups and downs of process right now, will matter as well.

Gray promised to be as aggressive on reform as Adrian Fenty but with a defter touch.  Let’s give him a chance to try to pull that off and right now it’s still too soon to tell if he is.  But, the hard choices are coming soon and they are going to be hard to dodge.

Today’s February 16th, 66 years ago American and Philippine forces were landing in Corregidor Island in the Philippines to begin what would be ten-day effort to reclaim the island from the Japanese.  It’s one of numerous small battles that along with the larger and better known ones added up to the effort to change the strategic map in the Pacific and end the war.  Today, though thankfully less bloody, around our country there are numerous labor-management battles that add up to a problematic whole and get in the way of genuinely improving our schools.  Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is in Denver trying to put a dent in that problem.  I’m skeptical that just more collaboration is the solution because that misreads the labor-management landscape to some extent.  Nonetheless, Duncan’s opening speech to the assembled crowd is a pretty good place to start a conversation that does need to happen.  If you want to think about how far (or not far at all depending on your perspective) the issue has moved, here are highlights of a National Governors Association meeting on the same topic in 2006 (pdf).

Also related to history Fordham Foundation has a new report out today on history standards, well-worth checking out.  And worth remembering that if we want to do a better job of teaching kids to read, a key strategy is to do a better job teaching things like history where kids can engage with real and relevant content.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is rightly touting some long-overdue coordination between government agencies to help people access student aid.  About a decade ago a Brookings – PPI working group I was involved in was looking at the impact of various federal student aid programs and the lack of data simply because agencies didn’t/wouldn’t talk to each other was astounding.

But, a new and important ProPublica report shows just how far the student aid bureaucracy still has to go.  The story focuses on loan forgiveness for people who become disabled.  To be fair, there is fraud so the agency cannot be cavalier  but the process can certainly work a lot better than it does today.

The President’s budget request is out today, here are highlights from OMB (pdf). Big debate today is actually higher-ed not K-12.  The K-12 elements are mostly predictable and pretty good. Based on earlier work I’ve done, I’m obviously supportive of many of the changes to funds intended to support teacher quality efforts and also the general streamlining (though that’s always a tough, read frequently fruitless, debate).  The early-childhood crowd, meanwhile, is excited because they got a headline program proposed.  I’m skeptical the Race to the Top elements will make it through Congress intact though.

The higher-ed components are interesting for two reasons, on substance and on politics.   The substance is the – should be alarming – reality that absent some changes to Pell it would consume about 10 percent of what’s now called discretionary “non-security” spending in the entire budget (pdf).  That’s alarming because it again shows how the overall contours of the federal budget mean that investments in areas like education are getting squeezed and while many education advocates don’t fancy themselves deficit hawks a look at the out year projections should cause them to reconsider.  So, the Administration’s Pell grant proposal is a nod to that reality and an effort to preserve the maximum award within the budget and political context (meaning their past proposals have not been well-received) they’re operating in.  On the politics, keep an eye on how this idea is received by conservatives in the House.   They, too, want to make cuts to Pell but deeper and different.  A big question is if and how Speaker John Boehner can manage his caucus and their response here will be an interesting test.  Kevin Carey has more on the higher ed pieces of the budget. And Jon Cohn at TNR has more on Pell.

In Houston they’re going at it over teacher evaluation again. And here I thought this was supposed to be collaboration week?

The Richard Barth – Wendy Kopp romance is well-known but one thing you saw at this weekend’s Teach For America summit is just how many TFA’ers met, married, and have started families via their experience with the organization.  But, there are 20,000 of them and many are apparently still single.

As for the summit itself plenty of reactions out there but my big takeaway was that you have an army for school improvement here. There were several thousand more teachers at the summit than at the National Education Associations general assembly – and many more of them paid their own way to be there. They want better conditions and support for teachers, more money for schools, and a system that works much better than the one we generally have today because it operates with professional norms and meaningful accountability.   As always plenty of room for legitimate disagreement about various strategies to improve schools but the people who are just attacking and demeaning Teach For America and its corps members have no idea what a shortsighted strategy that is – they are needlessly sowing dragon’s teeth.

I’m a day late but great Washington Post editorial yesterday about the arbitration ruling in D.C. this week. It’s worth pointing out that the actual technicality this case turned on (the teachers were not told of the exact reason for this dismissal) isn’t a requirement of city law but rather a procedural step in the collective bargaining agreement.  Because of all the moving parts in D.C. (new collective bargaining agreement with different rules, new evaluation system, and interaction with city code) that’s the issue this ruling and any appeal will turn on.  Read the entire ruling, and you should, via this link (pdf).

Couple of bigger picture takeaways from this episode:

First, unfortunately, things have become so litigious (and not just in education) that supervisors are often told not to go into detail on reasons for termination.  This is obviously at odds with a the idea of a professional culture and does shortchange employees.  Though I’m a skeptic on the outcomes from many peer-review programs today, this feedback aspect is undoubtedly a plus for them.

In terms of DC, for those watching for the real signals about the direction of education policy in Washington, the city’s next move is key. This one should be appealed, millions in public dollars and the quality of teachers in front of students is at stake.

More generally, the next time you hear someone say how easy it is to remove low-performing teachers who are new, think again. This episode is exceptional in its scale but does illustrate the Verdun-like quality to interactions like these.   Finally, and perhaps most importantly given the national conversation, next time you hear teachers union leaders proclaiming that they, too, have no patience for low-performing teachers and don’t want them in front of classrooms either remember this episode. Almost no one is arguing this group of teachers should be in front of students (and be sure to read the excerpts about performance/conduct in the ruling) but the local teachers union is cheering this as a big victory.  And while it’s a chance for national leaders to stand up and be counted on a pretty easy call – yet instead silence.  Play ‘em off Keyboard Cat…

Rick Hess and Sara Mead have made good points on “Rhee-gate” already.  For my part I really don’t care what Michelle Rhee’s value-add or gain scores would or would not have been in Baltimore almost two decades ago.  Why?  It’s not just that this whole thing is unprovable given the data available today.  Rather, it’s because  today she is pushing an actual education agenda that has ideas – with varying amounts of evidence and/or proof of concept behind them – and we should have a lively debate about those proposals. And it should be obvious that those ideas don’t hinge on her value-add scores or really much of anything that happened almost two-decades ago.

Imagine for a moment if Michelle Rhee’s value-added scores sucked but she was promoting an agenda of more spending, less charters and choice, and getting rid of standardized testing.  How many of the same people rushing to make hay out of this latest “scandal” would be silent about her performance in the classroom?  Conversely, say her value-add scores were off the charts but she was pushing that same anti-choice and pro-spending agenda, would the same people be rushing to embrace and defend her?

That, in fact, is the larger issue this episode reveals.  All the various priors that are commonly debated seem to only matter to the extent that one’s position in the debate is or is not acceptable to different parties.  And  that positional orientation is a pretty sorry state of affairs that persists day in and day out.  I’m consistently amazed at the extent to which it’s blatantly obvious people haven’t even read a particular piece of work but simply make assumptions based on who wrote it or by how often policy questions are framed in remarkably personal terms.

Eleanor Roosevelt noted that, “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”  There sure is a lot of time wasted in this field discussing people, positioning relative to various people, blogs that weirdly get off on all that, advocates who make it their stock and trade,  and we should all be embarrassed for the extent to which it’s tolerated given the scale of the challenges we’re facing.  I certainly don’t want to imply that this doesn’t go on in other sectors, it does.  But we’re worse than most and there is a price to be paid for that in terms of the quality of dialogue and ensuing policy and practice.

Good Ed Next look at the secondary impact of Teach for America.

Next Wednesday I’m moderating a session (online webinar) for NACSA about the role of charter school authorizers in the larger education reform conversation. Register through that link. Guests include John Deasy from LA and Jonah Edelman from SFC.  And next Thursday, Progressive Policy Institute event in Washington about scaling high-performing charter schools. Register through that link.  PPI has an interesting new paper coming on the issue (and here’s a link to a Bellwether analysis of one network published this week).  I’m on the panel along with Bryan Hassel, Eva Moskowitz,  and Brooks Garber.

And tomorrow, if you’re at the TFA mob scene Summit, I’m moderating a session about getting things done in a complicated political environment with former DC Mayor Fenty, former Baltimore Mayor Schmoke, Steve Barr, State Senator Mike Johnston from Colorado, and Andres Alonso, superintendent in Baltimore.  Stop in if you’re around.

Former Bush education advisory Sandy Kress is turning up the heat on No Child Left Behind.  He fuels a Ruben Naverrette column about Secretary Duncan.  He also pens an article, out next week (pdf), in the Harvard Journal on Legislation about NCLB and the Obama Administration’s “blueprint” for reauthorization, sounding a warning on what’s next for accountability policies.

Why does the education establishment so hate Teach For America? Turf and politics aside, one reason might also be the incredible amount of misinformation floating around. As 10K alumni descend on Washington to celebrate the organization’s 20th anniversary it’s a good time to look at some persistent myths – for instance that the research on Teach For America’s effectiveness is “mixed” or that the organization shows that just anyone can teach.  So that’s what this week’s School of Thought column at TIME is about:

In 1989, when Wendy Kopp proposed the idea in her senior thesis at Princeton of quickly training outstanding college graduates to teach in high-poverty schools for at least two years, her adviser told her she was “quite evidently deranged.” The comment has become legend since Kopp, unfazed, went on to launch Teach For America after she graduated, and on Saturday more than 10,000 of the nonprofit’s alumni will gather in Washington to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Kopp ultimately earned an A on her thesis, but when it comes to learning from her organization’s experience, the education field deserves a big, fat F. Over the past two decades, Teach For America (TFA) has grown from a scrappy start-up to a national corps with an annual budget of $212 million and a staff of 1,400. Along the way, it has generated a great deal of research about how to improve the teacher training and selection strategies that are commonly used today. Yet the reaction from the education establishment remains one of intense hostility, which echoes through state capitals, Washington and even the courts, where lawsuits have been filed to curtail the use of TFA teachers. (See 11 education activists to watch during 2011.)

TFA’s 20th birthday seems like as good a time as any to unpack the misconceptions put forward by its critics (and by some of its proponents). Here are five of the most common:

Read the entire thing here.

Update: Question in the comment section below about TFA-producing schools.  The list cited in the comments below is based on a profile of 2009 TFA Corps members.  In the TIME column I was referring to cumulative data over the organization’s history.  Cumulatively, the top 10 TFA-producing schools are (in order): University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, University of California – Berkeley, University of Texas at Austin, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Cornell University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of California – Los Angeles, Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Harvard University.