Cheating is back in the news in a big way this week because of the allegations in D.C.  But it’s a broader issue and that’s the focus of this week’s School of Thought column at TIME. These cheating episodes tell us something important if we move past the back and forth and take time to listen:

Cheating in school became education topic number one this week, except this time it wasn’t students cheating on tests — it was adults cheating for them. As part of a series, USA Today published an article strongly suggesting that teachers or administrators goosed student test score gains at an elementary and middle school in Washington, D.C. Since it was a school former D.C. chancellor Michelle Rhee had singled out for praise, the news created yet another battleground for Rhee combatants. The distraction is too bad because the focus on cheating offers — pardon the cliché — a teachable moment for parents and policymakers.

Even assuming that teachers and administrators at the school at the center of this week’s controversy didn’t do anything improper, too much cheating by adults does go on in too many schools around the country…

Read the entire thing here.

Education ideas are like neckties: Don’t toss them when they go out of style, they always come back in.

Here’s my take on what we know after two decades of school voucher programs of various sizes around the country.

Prospects in D.C.? By a relatively small margin the policy and political insiders we survey monthly at Whiteboard think that some restoration of the D.C. voucher program will pass because it’s such a priority for House Speaker Boehner.

At Fordham Mike Petrilli is quick to the trigger and thinks that the Obama Administration’s official statement of policy on the D.C. voucher negotiation spells death for Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization.   ESEA didn’t seem very likely to begin with but when you read the actual SAP about the D.C. voucher bill it does not include the magic words, “The President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto” and it’s not worded as strongly as it could be or as some would probably like.  As a general rule stuff like that matters, these things are worded carefully.

Update: Check out Sara Mead and Politics K-12 on this as well.

Over the past few years a small group of researchers, policy types, and practitioners have been meeting to discuss what education might look like in the more distant future, say 2020 or 2040.  Good conversations and an intellectually diverse group, I’ve enjoyed the meetings. It’s a more granular version of some of the ideas hatched by the ’2030 principals’ that made the rounds a few years back.  Now, over at Ed Week, some of the participants are blogging and writing.

Jay Mathews with a sensible take on the debate about cheating in DC. per today’s USAT story. Rather than belabor the issue here, check out Jay’s post.  Like all things involving Michelle Rhee the conversation about this has already taken on a Manichean quality. That’s unfortunate because NAEP (the independent federal test) scores did go up in D.C., too, over the past few years so let’s hope the forest is not lost for the trees here.  And let’s also hope that every school that has great gains isn’t now seen as suspect, there is some great work going on around the country thanks to many great educators and some sensible caution and skepticism should not give way to total cynicism.

Carl Cannon takes a look at the youth vote (with bonus NEA tie-in).

New and useful Aspen Institute package takes a look at two evaluation systems and the lessons learned. CRPE takes a look at the results with Washington State’s policies for rewarding National Board Certified Teachers.

And in Toledo, Ohio, keep an eye on an interesting situation unfolding around the local teachers contract, some nationally touted initiatives, and Race to the Top.

My School of Thought column at TIME this week takes a look at the larger implications behind Joel Rose’s departure from the New York City Department of Education at the end of the month. Rose founded “School of One” there.

Lately you can’t turn around in education without bumping into someone talking about innovation. The President is asking Congress for more federal support for educational innovation in this year’s budget, more and more school districts are naming “innovation officers,” and just last week a group of Silicon Valley start-up veterans launched a new incubator for innovative education companies. But while innovation is a catchy buzzword, on the ground conditions are often anything but innovative. This week, the resignation of a school administrator in New York City who most readers have probably never heard of vividly illustrates that disconnect.

Read the entire thing here.

Dropout Nation’s arch-nemesis Grad Nation is in the midst of their summit.

Three new papers out in conjunction with that: An update on national progress (pdf), the views of CEOs and college presidents about skills and credentials (pdf), and a look at education data and education as a data-driven enterprise (pdf).

In a hurry? Quick take on all that from a few months ago.

From New Orleans via CREDO more evidence that when discussing charter schools (or any school for that matter) you have to look under the label to see what’s going on.

New education start-up incubator launching.

Two in Chicago – where things could get interesting soon.  Renaissance Schools Fund wants a Director of Portfolio Management as well as a Portfolio Manager.   And one in Portland, OR at NWEA as senior research associate.

In D.C. the Center for Education Reform needs a director of development. Education Sector is hiring for a K-12 policy analyst as well as a higher ed policy analyst. And Education Pioneers needs a Program Manager.

Everybody seems to love this morning’s WaPo look at the new D.C. teacher evaluation system in action.* It is great as a piece of writing on a complicated issue.  But, I hope we get a look at how some teachers who are highly-rated react and view the system, too.  For another look at how data can be used within schools, Achievement Network’s annual report is well-worth checking out. They’re in D.C. and a number of other cities.

A little off-topic but good reads are this Andrei Cherny piece in Democracy, a provocative look at “individual age” policies. And my occasional co-author (and a great fly fisherman) Rob Saldin takes a look at how different wars have expanded minority rights and what that means for policy on gays in the military.

*A lot of notice that the article makes, or ascribes, the claim that teachers matter more than everything else, including poverty.  That one is always good for a ruckus in education circles.  What research shows right now is that teachers matter most as a within school influence on student learning. That’s a pretty settled point.  What’s up for some debate (and by that I mean a legitimate debate not the Teach For America achievement kind) is how powerful the teacher effect is relative to various other factors like poverty and also how durable it is – in other words does the effect of good teachers fade out after a year or two or does it accrue as students move through school?  But, I think you have different kinds of people making the ‘teachers matter more than anything else’ claim.  Some are just folks who don’t know any better.  But I think many others are simply talking in a shorthand, assuming the caveat is pretty well-known, and are most interested in things that education policy can meaningfully influence, like quality teaching.  So they say teachers matter most, with the unspoken, most of the things schools do. Where this gets confusing is that as a rhetorical matter people like to ascribe the ‘teachers matter more than anything else’ claim to their opponents in various debates because they can then knock it down.  In other words, it’s not that surprising that a lot of people are confused…

Yesterday my daughter (4) asked me what my column this week is about.  So I told her, it’s about this law for schools that needs to be changed but the people in charge can’t agree on how to do it.  “You mean they all want something different?” she asked.  I said, yeah, pretty much.  And she responded, “well that will never work!”  My School of Thought column this week at TIME has a little more context but that’s actually a pretty good synopsis:

The Obama Administration is doubling down on its push to overhaul the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified before Congress and aggressively urged action to revise the landmark and contentious education law that was passed in 2001. The President began this week with a speech at a northern Virginia middle school urging Congress to act and then spent part of Tuesday cutting several radio interviews prodding Capitol Hill even more.

This isn’t the first time the Administration has implored Congress to change this law: it’s been a constant drumbeat since 2009 (the law was due to be “reauthorized,” Washingtonspeak for tuned up, in 2007 but Congress couldn’t agree on how to do it) and even during the 2008 campaign. Now, frustrated with the lack of action, Obama and Duncan are trying a new approach: scaring Congress into acting. Both Obama and Duncan are highlighting Department of Education estimates that more than 80% of schools will not meet performance targets this year if the law isn’t changed. One wag dubbed the new strategy a “fail wail.”

Congress didn’t seem to buy the new 80% figure, or at least didn’t care. And it’s not a very credible number to begin with…But Obama doesn’t have a lot of cards left to play and he does have a basic point worth heeding: the No Child law was never intended to run for nine years without some changes, and it’s starting to show its age.

Read the entire thing here.

New blog from Title I Monitor:  Title-I-derland. If it’s half as good as the name it’ll be a must read.

It’s March 17th. Seven decades ago today President Roosevelt officially opened The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Here’s the scene. Discussing the burgeoning American artistic tradition The President noted that Americans, “have seen, across these last few years, rooms full of paintings by Americans, walls covered with the paintings of Americans – some of it good, some of it no good, but all of it native, human, eager and alive – all of it painted by their own kind in their own country, and painted about things they know and look at often and have touched and loved.”

A little less artistic, but here’s what I’m reading, including several really interesting reports:

In the book that Jane Hannaway and I did on collective bargaining in education we pointed out the lack of research about the impact of collective bargaining on student achievement.  That doesn’t stop advocates on all sides of the debate from making all kinds of ridiculous claims but the fact is there is very little solid research.  After all, you can’t just randomly assign labor conditions to different states.  Into that void walks Ben Lindy in the Yale Law Journal in an article you should check out (pdf) who takes advantage of a natural experiment to look at this question.

Charters respond to the most recent Detroit proposal, must-reading if you follow the issue. Check out this  new report on teacher tenure from Public Impact (pdf). Fordham adds some perspective on student achievement in the international context. And Appleseed takes a look at how decisions boards and other governance bodies make can affect outcomes.

Bridgespan takes a look at trends in the non-profit sector. Things are stabilizing.

I can’t shake that back to the future feeling these days.  The Administration says let’s reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Republicans in Congress say vouchers!  The House Education committee is holding hearings on regulations and flexibility (nevermind that the actual flexibility authority that exists in the current law is woefully underused).  And we’re discussing program consolidation.  Except for the economy it’s like the 1990s again.

Today is Patty Griffin’s birthday.  From the education world:

Wow, here’s an evergreen headline.  I continue to think that if the National Board doesn’t get in front of the cost-benefit issues associated with the credential (high cost and modest signaling effect) it’s in for a tough ride and it’s a missed opportunity for the field.

Whitmire v. Kahlenberg continues. And a really interesting article on charter school politics in Oregon. Schorr and McGriff on blended learning.

I missed this Jim Dwyer column that points on that with regard to LIFO in New York City the point of maximum leverage for Mayor Bloomberg was back when big raises were on the table.

Joel Klein in the Wash Post on teachers and teaching. Randi Weingarten and Michelle Rhee talk to the Cornell alum magazine  – but not together! Alexandra Usher – an up and comer you’ll be hearing more from – talks tracking and Germany.

60 Minutes on The Equity Project last night. You can see supplemental footage from Joel Klein, Randi Weingarten, and the school’s leader via those links.

Also good video from the News Hour, Lehrer on the new Merrow book.

Some good ones:

First, Bellwether is hiring again.  We are recruiting an additional partner for our strategic advising work. This is a great opportunity for a senior person.  We are also hiring an associate partner for our leadership work, this is a high-growth opportunity.  We’re also going to be adding more analysts soon so stay tuned.

Whiteboard Advisors is looking for a salesperson to sell Education Insider.  This role is commission-based but has substantial earning potential.  The successful candidate will be able to close existing leads and generate and close new ones for this monthly product focused on trends in national education policy.  Resumes and letters of interest to this email.

Public Editor role – a good one – at EWA is open.  Plus a bunch of roles at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

And TFA needs a director of data analysis – great role and they’re flexible on location.

On Sunday 60 Minutes* is going to take a look at The Equity Project school in New York City.  Sneak preview here. Should be good stuff, the school is interesting on a few levels.  I wrote briefly about the larger implications of the school last year in TIME.

*Bellwether periodically consults for some broadcast outlets including 60 Minutes.

A few things that you may not have gleaned from The New York Times story about the temporary rejection of a contract for TNTP to recruit and train new teachers by the city’s comptroller.  First, the idea that Comptroller Liu is at all independent is ridiculous. He held his victory party at UFT (the city’s teachers union) headquarters for God’s sake.  Second, this is about politics, but more than just back and forth on some others issues the article references and Liu’s mayoral ambitions and desire to jab a current mayor Bloomberg – it’s also about TNTP’s advocacy for the outrageous idea of ending “last in/first out” policies in New York, too.  There is a quote in there about that but it’s delightfully backwards! Finally, substantively, teachers are not interchangeable and attention to shortage subjects is a big deal.  That’s not a minor issue, it’s a key reason districts are changing how they hire.  In any event, this is all politics and playing for the crowd, the contract will be approved in the end.

It’s March 11, Verdi liked to debut operas on this date (Don Carlos and Rigoletto).  TNTP is debuting a something that while less artistic arguably has more day-to-day utility: It’s a trove of best practices on hiring and building school teams. This is a lot of great stuff and a very cool transfer or IP from the top-performing charter schools to the field at large.

Also on charters, various ideas about a charter merger in LA have been kicking around for a while and now the LAT writes-up the idea moving forward. Leave aside the ins and outs of the article, which are classic for anyone who follows LA closely, there is a larger issue here:  While mergers may make sense from a financial perspective do they always from an educational one?  Different schools and school networks have distinct cultures and norms. It’s part of what makes them effective. Blending those (or carefully designing a merger so as to not blend them) is a tricky proposition and more complicated than just integrating operations.

This week’s School of Thought column at TIME is about school visits. This time of year a lot of parents are thinking about school choices for next year.  Yet schools have different degrees of transparency and openness for prospective (and current) parents.  Some are open and welcoming – more or less come anytime and just give us a heads-up. Others have very restrictive policies.  That should make parents suspicious.

For some ideas about expectations parents should have in terms of openness and some ideas about visits I asked a variety of experts for their views.  They uniformly favored openness for parents and thought restrictive policies were not only wrong but actualy counterproctve for public schools.  Today’s column features 10 of those views, from teachers, school administrators, and national leaders like Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, Harvard Ed School Dean Kathleen McCartney, and former National Superintendent of the Year Carol Peck:

Across the country, many parents are anxiously making decisions about where to send their kids to school next year. Unfortunately, it’s still often easier to get information about a car, restaurant, or household appliance than about a school. Complicating matters, some schools, including some public schools, have highly restrictive policies about when parents can visit, what they can see, and even who they can talk to inside the school.

My job gives me the privilege of visiting a lot of schools every year and I’m always leery of any school that doesn’t offer full access. You’re just not going to learn much on a group tour where you don’t interact with the kids. But schools have an obligation to minimize disruption and keep students safe, so it’s understandable that they can’t just fling open their doors in the same way that a state capitol or public library can…

Read what the experts have to say and the entire column here.

Update: Here’s a great response from Marty Whitlow, a highly sought-after kindergarten teacher in Virginia (and wife of one-half of musical act Scuffletown):

Knowing that kindergarten was a major decision point for parents, we were always accommodating to those who wanted to visit our classrooms to observe our educational programs and teaching. We would structure visits so they could see first hand our teachers in action. They also had the opportunity to contact teachers to discuss their observations and address their questions. We also always had a Spring parent information meeting to discuss curriculum, schedules and educational approaches. In addition, future kindergarten students were invited in to tour classroom to spend several hours to help alleviate concerns for both the children and parents.

David Broder died today.  A lot of deservedly nice things being written about his life and his career (and don’t miss Carl Cannon’s take). Two I’ll add.  Broder was one of the first in the national press corps to get the changes starting to happen around education politics in the later part of the 1990s and to recognize what that would mean for states and for national education policy.  That’s probably because he spent a lot of time actually reporting.  Although he didn’t write about education often in recent years he kept an eye on what was going on and was current when you saw him.

He was also incredibly generous with his time and a fundamentally decent person.  He was great to me early in my career when he had no reason to be.

Quick, everybody to cover!  Education Secretary Arne Duncan told Congress today that 82 percent of schools would not make “adequate yearly progress” this year if the federal No Child Law isn’t reauthorized.  Scary!  Somebody do something!

Couple of thoughts on this claim.   First, it’s not the first time we’ve heard big numbers tossed around and they generally don’t come to pass for a few reasons: It’s hard to actually model this because there are a lot of variables in play every year and the law has a lot of loopholes that mitigate against this, in particular the “safe harbor” growth model rules.  In addition, there are current and pending waiver requests that will lower the numbers.  So caveat lector on Duncan’s statement.  Or perhaps more to the point caveat reporter.  Michele McNeill isn’t fooled, by the way.

Second, I’m not sure this is the strategy that will get Congress to move on No Child Left Behind.  The politics around No Child reauthorization right now are not especially substantive.  Rather, Republicans know the Administration really wants a bill and they’re forcing a leverage play to see how much they can squeeze out of Democrats to get the law done.  Yes, I know, it’s all about the kids.  Down the road there will be policy debates but right now it’s big picture politics driving things more than the issues.*

Because of that  it’s worth discussing the downside of this gambit.  Right now states are in the process of adopting new standards that are more ambitious than the ones in use today and in a few years will hopefully adopt new assessments based on them.   There is going to be a gut-check moment when that happens because there is a disconnect between the rhetoric about too many schools not making “adequate yearly progress” and the reality of outcomes from our schools today.  82 percent of American schools are not failing of course.  But given the enormous gaps in achievement, high dropout rates, etc…the numbers will still be daunting (and it’s worth remembering that all those kids do go to school somewhere and it’s not just in our big cities).  We have a bigger quality problem than we do a measurement problem.

So, what Duncan needs to be doing is laying the groundwork so when those new standards are adopted people understand what’s happening and are not shocked by some bad news.  Today’s gambit is media friendly but arguably confuses the issues even more rather than clarifying them and consequently works at cross purposes with the bigger strategy here.

*In fairness while I don’t think this strategy will move the Republicans I also can’t really think of one short of total capitulation that would.

Wait a minute…All the usual suspects told me that the Baltimore teachers contract was great, less acrimonious than D.C., and generally a much better model of how to get things done…but then I read this in the Baltimore Sun! Doesn’t the D.C. contract have an explicit buyout provision to deal with this issue and differentiates by job performance and wasn’t that one of the big points of controversy?  Why yes, it does!  And why yes, it was!

At Whiteboard David DeSchryver is creating a visual ESEA reauthorization timeline.

Kevin Huffman appointed as education commissioner in Tennessee. It’s good news for him, and good news for the state, which seems to be one of a handful that really has a chance of popping in terms of results from Race to the Top funding.  Note the teachers union response, they won’t hold his background as Vice President of Teach For America against him…Really good to know that a leadership role in one of the nation’s top non-profits isn’t a disqualification with them.

Joanne Jacobs chastises me for jumping on the class size bandwagon.  I guess, if the bandwagon started in the 1990s.  I wrote a paper in the late 90s that discussed the quantity v. quality problem with President Clinton’s class size reduction policy (I went to work for him anyway, I thought then, and now, that he was right about far more on education than wrong).  As I noted in last week’s class size column at TIME the difference between then and now is that we know a great deal more about how class size policies play out in practice today – though you wouldn’t know that from the national debate.  Even in the ’90s, though, it was understood that teacher effectiveness mattered more than class size, the Department of Education’s own literature review supporting the class size reduction policy noted this at the time and the Clinton policy was targeted in an effort to address that. Also, one aspect of this that doesn’t get a lot of attention is the idea of strategically lowering class sizes in key subjects, for instance English, to encourage more writing and critical discussion. In addition to smaller classes for academically at-risk students ideas like that make a lot of sense.  Unfortunately, we’re not having that sort of conversation because of the back and forth and focus on across-the-board cuts or increases.  To wit, class size jihadist Leonie Haimson told The New York Times the other day, “Unfortunately we’ve also seen the rise of a narrative that’s become dominant in education reform that insists that class size doesn’t matter.” Really?  Who in the mainstream of the education debate is actually saying that?

Speaking of the 1990s and context, or lack thereof, it’s worth pointing out that test score fraud happened then, too.  And before then as well. Yesterday’s USAT examination of the issue raised some important points – and a lot of this does go on – but it left out a little bit of context in terms of the longevity of the problem.  This didn’t originate with No Child Left Behind (and the article did include some boilerplate hysterics about the No Child law’s consequences that really don’t reflect the actual policy). For example, here’s Historian Diane Ravitch in 1999 discussing a cheating scandal in New York City: ”To say that tests create cheating is wrong,” Dr. Ravitch said. ”What creates cheating is people who cheat. If we spent as much time teaching kids as showing them the answer, they might have learned to read.”

But, while this does go on, let’s hope examination of it doesn’t fuel the cynicism that seeks to debunk the results every time a teacher or school or school system accomplishes something extraordinary.  That happens, too.

As Yoda might say: Always a lively debate, class size is.  And that’s the topic of this week’s School of Thought Column at TIME.  Listening to the debate about class size is like stepping into a time warp.  The big issues about whether teacher effectiveness maters more, costs and benefits, and which populations really do need smaller classes are pretty settled yet a raging debate goes on thanks to a lot of advocacy. That matters as districts face some hard choices this year:

Budget cuts! Layoffs! Bigger classes! Oh my! Given the mini-Wisconsins erupting around the country, it’s not surprising that parents are worried about their children’s schools. At least 45 states will face some budget shortfall for the fiscal year that begins this July, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Last week the school board of Providence, Rhode Island gave pink slips to the city’s entire teaching force. Rumors of class sizes as large as 60 students circulated in Detroit.

Reality check: There will be teachers teaching in Providence next year. Similar sky-is-falling scenarios will be averted in Detroit and elsewhere, too. But that doesn’t mean that there will not be fewer teachers—and larger classes—in many places when school opens this fall. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan may well be right that scarce resources will be the “new normal” for schools.

Read the entire column here.

Ezra Klein on the future of public sector unions.

Paul Pastorek and Michael Barber on deliverology and state education reform.